Gemeinsam sind wir stärker

Our most important competencies as a company include the values of “Group Focus” and “Inspiring Others”. This is put into practice, for example, by the fact that numerous colleagues travel to other operations every year to share their knowledge or acquire new knowledge. This cooperation is essential for us, but due to the COVID restrictions, it was more difficult to travel to other countries for almost two years. Lately, we were able to support each other better again. For those who travel abroad – often for the first time – it is always something special. We have collected a few impressions.

Due to a high order situation, the plant in Homberg experienced temporary staff shortages this year. As a result, for the first time more than ten employees from the Czech Republic supported in Cold Heading and Secondary Operations for several weeks. Roman Sallmann from Turnov was one of them: “At our plant I like the personal interaction with each other. But I did not expect such a pleasant atmosphere as in Homberg, and what’s more, the SO manager greets each employee personally every morning. I was pleased to have the opportunity to get to know a different location and the different people.” Alexander Loran, operator for thread production, is also pleased with the support in the highest order situation and confirms, that the nice colleagues were very motivated. However, one difficulty was the language barrier, as they could not communicate in German or English.

Tomáš Francu operated presses at the German headquarters far from his home for several weeks and still has the hurdles of Corona in mind: “During the four weeks I spent there, I even got used to the regular antigen tests, which made our trip somewhat unpleasant. On the way to Homberg I once did not receive the test results and so we were forced to take break shortly ahead of the border control.”

Employees from Turnov were also deployed to Bardejov, to help with the construction of the new plant. At the same time Slovakian colleagues traveled to other plants to get to know the machines better. The brothers Michal and Marian Cecko were in Osterode for several weeks. Here also, the greatest difficulty was the communication, as both of them hardly speak German or English. “It is interesting to see how production is done in another KAMAX plant and that’s an advantage for us. They have bigger machines than the ones we had seen before. Osterode is also a very nice town, with many beautiful places that we could see in our free time. We were happy to come to Germany and get support from such nice colleagues.”

But mutual support is not only again possible in the production halls. The appointment of the Technology managers from all European plants is another example of how important it is to organize larger meetings again [see photo above]. “Such meetings are important because face-to-face exchanges bring-in completely different components than a video conference”, emphasizes Pablo Gilabert, responsible for Special Projects within Technology. Together, all European department leaders are involved in redefining processes, task assignments and organizational charts as well as establishing more uniform standards.

Hoping that COVID will not strike harder again, it’s nice to have the chance to work more closely together – even analog across national borders: Together we are stronger!