NEUMAN & ESSER GROUP
NEA GROUP Company Policy
The NEA GROUP is an internationally operating group of companies with manufacturing companies at various locations across Germany, sales companies in the new machinery and aftermarket business in Germany, and branches spread across four strategic business units worldwide. The headquarters are located in Übach-Palenberg. The NEA GROUP has a decentralized structure where each company compiles its own separate annual financial reporting and is managed by appointed directors.
Everyday communication within the NEA GROUP and at customer interfaces is a meeting point for people of various qualifications, mentalities and cultures with an equal variety of tasks to be carried out. Such variety has made a set of guidelines and regulations necessary which ensure a fair and result-oriented cooperation. This requires everyone, from the director to the office clerk, to make respecting these guidelines their daily objective. They are firmly embedded as an integral element of our corporate culture.
The main objectives of the NEA GROUP are customer satisfaction, safety, quality, and modernity of the delivered products, as well as adherence to deadlines and a fair and responsible cooperation with our customers and suppliers, and between employees in their work with each other. In all of these aspects, we are committed to a sustainable use of the resources available to us.
The following beliefs form the basis of our actions, and the means to achieving continuous improvements:
Safety
Keeping everyone within our company's sphere of influence safe and sustainably healthy is the prime concern of the NEA GROUP. To this end, we strive to minimize disturbances or accidents in all of our business units by proactively identifying and countering hazards. Open and constructive communication is the basis to ensure the best-possible awareness of safety and a constant improvement of all processes. This also requires all people involved to adhere to all applicable legal obligations. This objective perfectly reflects the long-established NEA GROUP tradition of always combining safety with quality.
Quality
Under the headline “360° quality” we constantly strive to maintain the highest possible quality in our own scope of supply and peripheral products, in our service, technical advice and the supply of spare parts.
Our qualified and motivated staff, in combination with our state-of-the-art technology, are the foundation that makes this possible.
Together we are actively working to put the Integrated Management System, with its defined processes, into practice to achieve the highest level of quality for our customers.
Environmental protection
At NEUMAN & ESSER, protecting the environment is closely connected to the idea of sustainability. We consider it a responsibility across generations to preserve our planet and to use limited resources carefully. This we take very seriously. Our employees worldwide respect and adhere to the applicable laws and regulations. Minimizing our impact on the environment is central to our activities – acting today for a better tomorrow.
Reliability
Along with product quality, adherence to deadlines is one of the most significant requirements set by customers. Starting from the submission of an offer and providing drawings and documentation to delivering our products it is imperative for us to use all available resources in order to make sure the terms agreed on with the customer are respected at all times. The extent to which any such deadline is adhered to significantly depends on the capacity of each individual employee to meet the deadlines within his area of responsibility. In essence we are only able to deliver on time and at high quality if each member of staff acts independently, considering himself as entrepreneur within his own sphere of responsibility. This is why our guiding principles are to foster a high degree of personal responsibility, and to shorten communication channels. In effect, the postulate that responsibility should be delegated was crucial in triggering the initiation of our process of decentralization.
Flexibility
The cooperation between the various companies is organized by way of developing standardized work processes without this affecting flexibility. Well-defined responsibilities and established processes are important for a quick processing of orders, while still leaving employees enough room to keep an eye out for creative solutions in their everyday jobs. The criterion that nowadays differentiates between success and failure in international competition is, to a large part, no longer "big beats small", but rather "fast beats slow". Every time one of our customers faces a technical problem presents an opportunity for us to be of assistance with a quick and flexible reaction. At our company the question of how such support services are financially reconciled is agreed on subsequent to the successfully rendered service, based on the basic belief that when negotiating with a satisfied customer, the outcome will always be fair.
Fairness
A corporate culture that is characterized by fair cooperation in the workplace forms the basis for a positive work environment and is therefore an essential requirement for the economic success of a company. Tolerance and equal opportunities are integral elements of a good work environment.
Fair cooperation relies on mutual respect in how we treat each other. Discrimination and harassment based on race or ethnic background, gender, religion or ideology or because of disability, age or sexual identity are a violation of the principle of fair cooperation laid down in this document.
All employees are obliged to align their behavior on the principle of partnership and in particular to respect the personality and dignity of each employee.
Internal fairness towards colleagues means regarding them as internal customers, and offering them the support they ask for, which in the end allows for a fast implementation of customer wishes. Fairness also means bringing shortcomings to light. It is a sign of inner strength to face the situation and openly discuss the issue.
Mistakes admitted to early on generally increase the chance of limiting consequential damage as regards both substance and material. As a general rule, any delay potentially leads to additional efforts becoming necessary to correct the error, which invariably also involves higher financial resources. Our customers greatly value our openness and transparency in this respect. There is nothing that would damage our image more than a delay in admitting damage or restricted functionality of the delivered product to a customer, if the issue should clearly have been noted at an earlier point while still in the hands of the NEA GROUP. We should not overlook the fact that a policy of openly informing customers early on of a particular shortcoming and its cause, and remedying it as quickly as possible even enhances the company image.
Continuous improvement
The further development of the management system is carried out by way of a PDCA-Deming-Cycle which among other things involves regularly reviewing the corporate policy regarding its continued appropriateness. The basis of this permanent improvement is a detailed formulation of objectives and regular reviews and assessments by the management of the NEA GROUP. This also includes continuously checking the effectiveness in all system-relevant stages of order processing such as planning, contract review, construction, development, production, procurement, installation and customer service by means of internal and external audits.
In addition, each employee is invited to get involved and contribute their own ideas for improvements. The section Idea Management on the NEA INTRANET has a description of the processes and responsibilities in this context.