The quality assurance systems and automation solutions of BST eltromat International are known worldwide for their high standard of quality. The company lays the foundation for this quality with its comprehensive integrated management system that pursues the holistic and continuous optimization of all processes. This system is intended to support BST eltromat’s long-term market leadership in all product and service areas, giving its customers an advantage over their competitors.

These days, standard certifications are not sufficient in enabling companies to stand out among the competition and offer added value to their customers. Certifications such as ISO 9001 (Quality Management) and ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) are already increasingly being demanded by customers, while ATEX certifications such as RL 2014/34/EU in combination with ISO/IEC 80079-34 are even prescribed by law in certain areas. BST eltromat aims to further expand its position as a leading manufacturer of quality assurance systems – and to safeguard this position for the long term. Against this background, the company developed a comprehensive, integrated quality management system and has strategically aligned itself as a mainstay in its long-term cooperation with customers.

The company’s strategy of excellence takes a comprehensive view of the company’s structure and endeavors to continuously and integratively optimize the quality and efficiency of all processes. At the same time, the company aims to learn from the world’s best practices, implement them in the company’s own processes, and develop them – with the ultimate objective of serving as an example to other companies in the industry. After all, imitation will only get you as far as second place. “Companies that develop, manufacture, and distribute quality assurance systems must place high demands on their own quality management system,” says Managing Director Johann-Carsten Kipp, summarizing the approach that BST eltromat’s quality management is based upon.

Some companies set up parallel management systems – e.g., for quality, the environment, energy, and occupational safety. While integrating these into a comprehensive management system, BST eltromat identified the right way to achieve above-average performance on all levels. Regardless of whether the system is focused on quality management, environmental protection, occupational and health safety, energy management, privacy, compliance (legal conformity), or other areas – ultimately, it’s all about taking the requirements of customers, business partners, employees, and policymakers, and bringing these in line with the services that companies provide. Additionally, a connected system is ideally equipped to take into account how changes in one area impact the other areas. Complex, cross-departmental connections and interdependencies are, after all, easier to coordinate in an integrated system than in multiple systems that operate separately.

The company’s quality management team developed a process map that takes all processes into account and categorizes them into three strands: management processes, support processes, and core processes. All of these are regularly analyzed by the responsible members of staff, by means of the management system. Workshops serve as a setting for determining the status quo, setting new goals, and developing concepts for the future. Later, the responsible parties consult together to evaluate what was achieved – creating a base for the development of further improvements. This process resulted in integrated control loops that boost all processes to a consistently higher level of quality, and enable them to remain there.

With the help of this process map and these control loops, BST eltromat not only controls the vast complexity of its company-wide strategy of excellence, but also implements the process optimizations at the required speed. The optimization process is a never-ending task. One major reason is because standards, legislation, and markets are subject to constant changes. And quality management also has to be adapted accordingly.

High quality can only be achieved by companies that are prepared to make the necessary investments. But if the strategy of excellence is implemented successfully, these investments will pay off. Within the scope of a cost-benefit analysis, BST eltromat identified its business optimum – that is, the point at which the company’s requirements ideally correspond with its actual performance. The process optimizations that were derived from the strategy of excellence now contribute to bending the cost curve and gradually bringing the business optimum to the point of maximum customer satisfaction.

Successful strategies of excellence have been shown to sustainably alter the corporate culture – the fundamental mindset and behaviors within a company. Among other changes, this includes the employees’ identifying more strongly with their areas of work and responsibility. They realize that they are offering an exceptional quality of consultation, products, and services, all of which benefit their customers. This results in a working environment that sparks fascination and increased initiative. In short, with its integrated management system, BST eltromat is achieving a higher level of maturity as a business and becoming a leader in customer satisfaction.

BST eltromat and its customers benefit equally from the strategy of excellence. Customers have an advantage over their competitors – thanks to their supplier’s high quality of solutions and services – and are thus able to meet their own customers’ demands better than other companies on the market. Likewise, BST eltromat is able to perform as a leader on the international market. And this leading role is clearly recognized – with all of the possibilities that come with it. But it also comes with the challenge of securing this market position for the long term, with the help of the integrated management system.