Total Quality Management (TQM) award
Excellence in Initiative
ZF products win many awards, and the Group itself receives regular accolades from customers for good collaboration and innovative developments. What’s the secret? Probably the creative minds developing high-value products and optimizing operational processes all over the world. Every year, the ZF Group recognizes the best of those ideas with its Total Quality Management (TQM) award.
Team spirit is at the heart of the TQM competition
The prize is awarded to the winners of a competition, for which each project team can submit one of its successfully implemented concepts. “The TQM competition is an ideal platform for actively promoting the self-initiative of our employees and hence the continual improvement of processes in our company,” says ZF CEO Hans-Georg Härter. “Furthermore, the competition brings exceptionally good solutions to everyone’s attention across the entire group, so that we can learn and profit from each other.” But this is not just a competition for solo performances. Team spirit is at the heart of the TQM competition. Ideas that are developed and implemented jointly are actively encouraged. And there are plenty of them. By the time of the award presentation on 5 September, no fewer than 1,500 ZF employees worldwide had entered the competition with 366 projects.
The Best Ideas From Around the World
This was the first time a prize was awarded for a product innovation. The proud winners were a team from the Car Driveline Technology division in Friedrichshafen, led by Peter Schiele. Thanks to their hydraulic impulse oil storage system, a startstop function for ZF’s new 8-speed automatic transmission, fuel savings of up to five percent can be achieved.
Several teams also turned their attention to the subject of information protection. The jury, drawn from management, was won over by a protection mechanism for electronic control units developed by the team from Corporate Research and Development in Friedrichshafen. This is an encryption process that protects the unit from unauthorized access, thus preventing technical know-how from falling into the wrong hands. Among those receiving other awards was the ZF Steering Systems’ site in Nanjing, China. Restructuring here created an extra production line and more open areas in a factory hall.
