Agility is encouraging

Ricarda Knödler is part of the team, and is more than just an anonymous Outlook contact...

You can sense how happy she is to be talking to customers when she smiles into the receiver and ends the conversation positively. Born in Frankfurt's Bornheim district, Ricarda's heart still fills with joy at the sight of the city's famous skyline. She's always been brave.

For example, when she joined Kuraray Europe GmbH in 2008, her workplace from day one was the outer office of our current managing director, Dr. Gutweiler. It also took courage to be the first karaoke participant to stand up and sing Herbert Grönemeyer's song "Was soll das?" in front of her astonished colleagues at the 2018 Christmas party. A team also requires courage when adopting new approaches for the benefit of its customers. This can mean team members exchanging key areas of work – such as commission accounting – and country responsibilities.

Job rotation in the order processing team

The PVB Technical Resin team has shown courage and restructured all its work areas for the benefit of customers. During the first few days following the change in the team, Ricarda asked herself: "Can I do this? Everything is so new..." And today – three months later – she is convinced of the following: "What we're seeing now is constant optimization. This success has only been possible because everyone in our order processing team was open to the job rotation model." She loves to develop her skills further – for example by studying the wide-ranging topics relating to the individual task areas, because the job rotation model at the same time creates security when it comes to standing in for colleagues. "After all, everyone now knows all the work steps," says Ricarda Knödler. "During the preparation phase, we jointly scrutinized the team's entire task structure. Not easy, because we're the operational linchpin for the entire global business of the business unit. The important handling of the time zones, wasn't a problem, because over the years we have also gotten to know each other globally."

Looking outside the box... The understanding of business is developing rapidly...

Each day at 9am on the dot, the entire PVB Technical Resin Team gathers together in Jörg Bruss's office for precisely 15 minutes for the "Daily Stand-Up Meeting". All the team members take part: the global business unit management, technical service/product development, the Germany/Austria/Switzerland sales region, team order processing, the marketing coordinator and the business unit assistant. Our target: focus, short decision paths and open communication. When Jörg (Bruss), Anna (Meier) and Thomas (Sabel) talk about customer visits, we all gain valuable insights that we can then use for our customers. This in turn enables us to provide a more customer-oriented service.

 

Agility is encouraging.