Focus: Resilience

Anika Klissenbauer, Business Coordination Manager, ZEISS Industrial Quality Solutions (Stockholm, Sweden)

My team is spread across three countries and four sites: in Denmark, Finland and at two offices in Sweden. When I started my new position, one of the first things we did was to carefully analyze the current processes together, visualize them and think about how we can enable optimum teamwork. Over the past year, we were able to identify inefficient steps, set priorities and gradually work on improving things.

It's important to me that my team never loses sight of the big picture. Service coordinators shouldn't just know how the processes work in their department, but also understand the steps that happen before and after service is performed. We've created greater transparency by visualizing these processes and no longer have to explain everything because our colleagues are better informed.

Terrance Siew, Regional Product Manager for Ophthalmic Diagnostics, ZEISS Medical Technology (Singapore)

Here in Singapore, we have a real cultural melting pot. That’s why it’s so important that we really listen to one another. Those who make people feel valued and respected encourage open and constructive discussions – and therefore more productive collaboration. If this doesn’t happen, people’s words can easily be misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Eye contact is another way of showing someone that you’re interested in what they’re saying. In a business context in particular, you can thus be both confident and sincere, which is essential when it comes to sales presentations. I try my best not to be negative when talking to others. Instead, I phrase things positively to offer alternatives and solutions to problems.

Krishna Khandelwal, Factory Operations Head, ZEISS Industrial Quality Solutions (Bangalore, India)

I have overall responsibility for the planning, production, quality assurance and delivery of multi-sensor coordinate measuring machines. We mainly supply the local market, but we also produce machines for customers in Southeast Asia, Latin America and South Korea. My team is already quite efficient. That’s because we have scaled up our knowledge and technical expertise.

Full installation is now based on lean management methods, which means our employees have all the tools they need at their workstations. Minimal recruitment has enabled us to double our output in the past three years. Fortunately, we didn’t need any additional space, which would have incurred considerable costs.

Franziska Bäurle, Head of Assembly for D2M, ZEISS Consumer Products (Oberkochen, Germany)

Efficiency is an important issue where I work. We continually improve existing processes to ensure cost-effective manufacturing. Here's a very recent development: we now no longer have to operate the calibration stand for data lenses manually. Automation has enabled us to reduce the lead time from 20 to 10 minutes.

During this time, the staff member can take care of something else. Another thing that's really important to me: every staff member has received comprehensive training, enabling job rotations and allowing them to work at different workstations. This flexibility makes us both more motivated and more efficient.

Deborah Callander, Process Engineer, ZEISS Medical Technology (Edinburgh, Scotland)

At Hyaltech, we manufacture a gel for cataract surgery that creates the space necessary for the lens implantation. One of my current projects is to reduce the number of bubbles in our syringes. Unlike most injectables, our gel is so viscous that the doctor can't release the bubbles prior to surgery. This means we have to discard any syringes containing bubbles, which leads to significant waste.

Due to the viscosity as well as temperature stability and sterility requirements, we can't employ methods typically used in industry to remove bubbles. So we're trying something new: we've installed a specially designed nozzle on the receiving vessel. This almost completely eliminates the dissolved gas in the gel. A slight vacuum draws out the gas without compromising sterility. We hope that, by the end of the fiscal year, we're no longer discarding any syringes because of bubbles.