How does a company permanently reduce costs while simultaneously improving quality?

When it comes to productivity, we set high standards for ourselves. In short, WACKER acts according to the principle “There’s always room for improvement.”

Moreover, this does not require an economic crisis of the kind that we had all over the world in the 2009 fiscal year. We are convinced that a company will remain successful in the long term only if it reduces its costs while simultaneously improving quality.

In order to establish this principle firmly and lastingly throughout the company, we launched our own program in 2004: the “Wacker Operating System,” or WOS for short. At first, WOS concentrated on production. In the meantime, other corporate units have also been integrated into the WOS program. These include logistics and the service units in Site Management and Engineering.

WOS is not a one-time program, but rather a process that begins with the question: Are we doing things right? Its objective is to make what is good even better. In the process, we scrutinize all of the operational workflows.

How does that work? By setting ourselves ambitious goals. We want to increase our productivity by 10% each year. This requires the help of our employees. We have established and trained “productivity managers” throughout the company.

Together with the heads of the various units, they define sensible objectives and, in conjunction with the employees, seek innovative ways of fine-tuning the processes. To this end, they develop new methods and also have access to tools that have already been put to effective use. Systematic process optimization is a key element of our success. It is equally important, however, that the employees themselves have the ambition and enthusiasm to strive for improvement every single day. This is the culture which ultimately spells success.

This Annual Report describes four of WACKER’s paths to productivity.

WACKER will keep on endeavoring to improve a little each day. Over the next few years, WOS will be established firmly in all parts of our company. We will continue to work on this at every level. In the WOS ACADEMY, established in 2009, the workforce is being prepared and trained for this task.

As quality and cost leader in many of our fields of business, we are sure of one thing: improvement is a process that is never-ending.