Quality

As a leading provider of innovative chemicals and plastic solutions, Borealis looks back at more than 50 years of experience. With tomorrow in focus, the two business groups Polyolefins and Base Chemicals will continue to excel in quality and reliability whilst offering products that enhance society in general and address global challenges in particular.

Borealis aims to meet its customers’ expectations with a focus on quality in terms of product reliability and delivery. Whilst in compliance according to industry standards, the company also works to continuously improve its best practices. Together with its customers and partners, Borealis’ goal is to seek solutions to efficiently fulfil their needs. To achieve this, the following core processes are in place:

• A well-established integrated management system for quality, health, safety and environment. The compliance of this management system is regularly reviewed by monitoring performance indicators, conducting internal audits and management system reviews with top management involvement. Compliance is also certified externally via the relevant ISO standard certifications (see section below);
• A company-wide system and process for continuous improvement to drive learning and best practice beyond the commonplace standards;
• Customer satisfaction levels monitored regularly via customer surveys and by deriving improvement actions from an integrated complaint management system.

Managing quality: The Borealis Management System

Borealis' commitment to quality leadership is reinforced by the creation of its quality policy implemented company-wide. The policy is part of the Borealis Management System which brings all policies, procedures, processes and instructions together in one system. This system is complemented by competence building as well as sharing know-how and expertise through eLearnings, new employee introductions and continuous awareness, e.g. via a complaint and quality incident action monitoring system.

Continuously improving: The Borealis Way

The Borealis Way (TBW) is a five step process model to continuously improve the way the company operates and handles challenges and opportunities. The five steps of the TBW process are: Define, Analyse, Solve, Implement and Review. TBW methodology is the recommended way to improve products, services and processes within Borealis. It is used for complex projects but also for small improvements at local production and logistic sites. This supports the company’s guiding principle that continuous improvement is the responsibility of each employee to ultimately drive quality and customer satisfaction.

Meeting customer needs

Borealis’ aim is to have satisfied customers as they are the foundation of the company’s business. Customer satisfaction is measured in many ways such as the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) and a set of performance indicators to manage delivery performance including, but not limited to, Delivery to Request (DTR) and Delivery to Promise (DTP), and Overall Asset Effectiveness (OAE).

The CSI is obtained through Borealis’ Customer Loyalty Programme. The goal of this programme is to define the needed action plans to improve customer satisfaction by conducting a survey on a quarterly basis. Performance is rated based on five attributes (listed below) thereby allowing Borealis to track and continuously improve its processes to become an even better customer oriented company:

• Product performance
• Supply chain execution
• Technical service
• Sales support
• Innovation approach

Delivery performance is how Borealis’ customers perceive the reliability of its supply chain execution. DTR indicates whether the customer received the correct order. DTP indicates whether the promise of on-time delivery was kept. Borealis believes it is only as good as its last delivery!

OAE is used to measure the efficiency of production installations and assets combined with the ability to sell the volumes to the market. With this approach Borealis links its customers’ demand with the company’s production planning to ensure the supply chain to customers is being filled with the products ordered.

Providing excellent customer support

A formalised customer service recovery process is implemented to recover quality and customer confidence if customer expectations are not fully met. Where relevant the aim is to avoid the reoccurrence of complaints. Every complaint received is registered and, apart from being addressed individually, seen as an opportunity to learn and implement sustainable improvements.

Complying to standards whilst striving for excellence: quality standards and certifications

Borealis is committed to excellence for its products, services and contracts amongst others and complies with industry standards. To secure the quality of its products and services, Borealis has implemented the quality management standard known as ISO 9001. Borealis is periodically audited by an external certification organisation to certify that the company complies with ISO 9001.

In addition, Borealis also systematically drives environmental industry standard, which is demonstrated by the ISO 14001 certification. Due to its high commitment to safety and health, the OHSAS 18001 standard is followed. Plants which produce products for automotive applications are certified at the standard for automotive suppliers ISO/TS 16949.