Take a look at a car dashboard and a margarine tub—two completely different products that turn out to have something in common. Both products are made from polypropylene plastic, a plastic produced by Ducor Petrochemicals. Each year, the 90 employees produce 180 million kilos of this plastic. Ducor is a modest but innovative player in the European polypropylene market. Thanks to a good product and good service, they have around 200 regular customers in the Benelux and Germany.

From the liquid gas propylene, Ducor produces, among other things, the versatile plastic polypropylene. Ducor’s customers then make all kinds of end products from this. For example, bumpers, household items, or packaging materials.

Requirements, requirements, and more requirements!

Ducor Petrochemicals produces a versatile range of polypropylene. All products are environmentally friendly, non-toxic, and recyclable. The material is primarily used for the production of packaging, textiles, films, household items, cars, and electrical appliances. To guarantee quality, the organization must comply with various standards and requirements. For instance, the company deals with the well-known ISO 9001 quality standard. This standard primarily relates to customer focus, motivation, and process-oriented working. Ducor also focuses on protecting people and the environment—the requirements in this area fall under ISO standard 14001. Before purchasing Comm’ant, it used a QEH system (Quality, Health & Environment) to implement standards and requirements in its operations. This system demanded a lot of commitment, knowledge, and skills from employees.

Siloed culture

Eric Kok is the Operations Manager and Erik Vermeulen the SHEQ Manager at Ducor. As mentioned earlier, before Comm’ant, the company used a QEH system to describe its primary and secondary business processes. The system merely formed an integration of procedures and work instructions. Eric Kok found it a flat system: “It wasn’t possible to create connections between different business units. Yet departments must communicate and collaborate with each other regarding operations. Because the coherence between departments wasn’t clearly structured, confusion and misunderstanding sometimes arose among employees.” Eric Kok further noted that a lot of maintenance was needed to keep the package running:

“The system wasn’t automatically consistent. If something was changed, related elements didn’t automatically change along with it. So you first had to figure out which elements were affected in order to then manually update them. It should be clear that keeping the QEH system up-to-date required a lot of work and time.”

No focus on how, but on what

The old QEH system was based on procedure descriptions rather than process descriptions. The system showed how actions should be performed, comparable to a work instruction. It didn’t look at what an employee needed and what they actually delivered (the inputs and outputs). These inputs and outputs of the business process are very important. After all, one employee’s output is the next employee’s input, and this continues until the desired end result is achieved. Eric Kok found it difficult to identify the loose ends of operations without the input-output connection:

“No insight into this led to double bookings and miscommunication within Ducor.”

Compliance complications

Internal and external audits require that you as an organization must be able to demonstrate how legislation is regulated within business operations. This concerns not only legislation relating to products, but also to business processes. The old static QEH system didn’t have a relational database, which led—in addition to the previously mentioned problems—to compliance issues as well.

Eric Kok saw the consequences: “Because the system wasn’t built transparently and relationally, it became complicated to link standards and requirements to our business processes. That wasn’t convenient during internal and external audits.”

Time for improvement

The way of working was therefore not optimal—it was time-consuming and sometimes frustrating. Ducor then went looking for a solution. They examined several packages and found that most packages were too complicated. The disadvantage is that a lot of additional training is then needed before the software can actually be used. The input and output structure of processes was also missing, which had caused miscommunication. Until Eric Kok came into contact with Comm’ant: “Comm’ant has a relational database, which immediately offered a solution to our problems at the time. For example, the compliance component of the organization can be achieved much better. In addition, the system is logically structured and very accessible for inexperienced users. Furthermore, the maintenance and management of the system required considerably less time and work.” The choice for a new system therefore fell on Comm’ant.

Implementation

According to Eric Kok, the implementation of Comm’ant went well: “Comm’ant encourages a new way of working. We left the old procedures and work instructions aside to focus on process-oriented thinking and working. We focus on the inputs and outputs within processes. In doing so, we continuously make choices about the level of detail in which processes are described. For many processes, the main lines are sufficient, but when it comes to safety processes, all the finer details matter. The culture change formed a nice challenge—after all, employees had become accustomed to their own way of working. Nevertheless, the individual benefit quickly became noticeable during the new way of working. All in all, it was a smooth implementation process!”

Getting everything right the first time

Erik Vermeulen thinks it’s important that as few mistakes as possible are made and that the wheel isn’t reinvented every time: “Ultimately, of course, I want us to do everything right immediately, so that the chance of errors is minimized. It’s also important that all laws and regulations are complied with. Partly thanks to Comm’ant, we have our affairs in such order that our ideal picture is getting closer step by step.” In addition, Comm’ant has created an improvement cycle within the organization: “Comm’ant’s system is filled with, among other things, documents, forms, databases, and MSDS (Material Safety and Data Sheets). Every change or improvement is added to the system. The process therefore runs increasingly effectively and efficiently. Moreover, employees regularly experience the advantage of Comm’ant’s powerful search function. If there’s a question, they can search for the answer themselves within the system, so lengthy discussions with colleagues are a thing of the past. They can see how the process runs within the organization and what they can contribute to it. With Comm’ant, virtually every question regarding business operations is answered.”

Continuity through knowledge preservation

Comm’ant is constantly supplemented and improved, which increases the available supply of knowledge. A living knowledge management system within the organization, also for identifying tasks, responsibilities, and authorities. This brings several advantages. It creates clarity for every employee about what is expected of them. In addition, knowledge is process-bound and not person-bound—the advantage of this is that in case of sick leave, business operations can simply continue. Because knowledge is secured in Comm’ant, it’s clear what needs to be done. Even when employees leave, it’s essential to retain valuable knowledge. A knowledge leak costs companies a lot of money.

“Comm’ant is also a tool with regard to continuity,” says Erik Vermeulen.

ISO certification

All standards and requirements are linked to business processes and the outputs to which these standards apply. For each process, it’s now clear which standards and requirements are secured there. In this way, the company can also excellently show external parties where they stand.

“We often use Comm’ant when checking internal and external audits. We test what’s in Comm’ant against reality. Identifying gaps is fast and effective. Furthermore, tables of specific data can be generated, bringing loose ends into view. Comm’ant’s structure is essential for securing and complying with this!”

More cabinet space, less maintenance

Erik Vermeulen comes from a company where they still used quality manuals. Most processes were then hardcopy, so he’s used to stacks of books. He finds it pleasant that Comm’ant is completely digital and web-based:

“With paper and electronic manuals, version management is the biggest problem—it’s terrible to have to update and replace everything. That’s a thing of the past with Comm’ant; now the most current version rolls directly out of the system.”

Great to work with

Both Eric Kok and Erik Vermeulen are of the opinion that Comm’ant is accessible and simply structured: “With a few clicks you have the information you’re looking for, and building with this package is also simple. By thinking logically, you have the basis for business operations in no time.” They were also very pleased with Comm’ant’s search function: “If you enter a few terms, you immediately get a number of suggestive variants, and in another column you see in which document it occurs. So you can even search through the contents of documents.”

Stable system and excellent service

Erik Vermeulen experiences the system as stable: “I use the system regularly and it just works. I’ve never experienced anything freezing up. If a system has errors, irritations increase—you really don’t want that. Switching to a new system is already a big step for Ducor; system errors would be disastrous in that context. Comm’ant is stable!” Both gentlemen agree that Comm’ant provides good service:

“All questions we have to Comm’ant are always answered quickly and professionally—you can really work with that. It’s well organized, even when there’s a product update. I have the impression that we understand each other well.”