How flexibility and efficiency go hand in hand
An interview with Cagri Gonulal. (Plant Support)
Cagri, what do you do for Smurfit Kappa Drogenbos?
I work in plant support, what we call ‘PrePro(duction)’ in Drogenbos. I am mainly responsible for order preparations and I’m a backup for a large variety of colleagues/functions; I am a bridge/translator between sales and production.
What are the keys to finding a balance between being flexible with our customers’ requests and still making everything run as efficiently as possible?
I believe that you should first determine your priorities and use that to find the optimal approach. On the other hand, it is also important to have a strong team. If you have to switch from one problem to another, you need a lot of information to take a further step. If you don’t have a strong team next to/behind you, you lose a lot of time and sometimes also control over the situation.
How do you deal with unexpected circumstances?
I am a very calm person, when there is a problem I think ‘Cagri, there are 24 hours in a day, that is enough to get everything in order’. Then I look calmly at the situation and very pragmatically at ‘What result should we achieve?’. Only then do I look at ‘What resources do we have?‘ And finally at: ‘What are the most efficient ways to achieve this result?‘.
I never look at the problem in the middle of the process, but at the result we need to achieve to solve this problem. The most important thing is the result and ultimately it is about keeping our customer satisfied. Only once everything has been resolved, I look at the cause of the problem to avoid it next time.
How does good teamwork help out specifically?
The hands-on mentality of the team is very important. Once you set your priorities, you can tackle them together. You also need a strong team and leadership for division of tasks and exchange of information. This allows everyone to contribute to solving the task/problems and give their best, and ultimately serve the customers in the best way possible.
Are efficiency and flexibility related or contradictory?
At our company efficiency and flexibility always go hand in hand. Without efficiency you will never be able to be flexible. Because you can never achieve your results. The clients’ satisfaction is always at the top of my priorities.
How so?
If you make the process more efficient, you will have time to implement a number of solutions when dealing with a problem. Efficiency will give you leeway to maintain your flexibility.
At Drogenbos we are an incredible orchestra J
Thank you Cagri for this interesting interview!
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