STX Engine Snares National Quality Management Award

Company's successful management reform coping with changes to make its engines quality upgrading cited

STX Engine Co. is the winner of the Korea National Quality Award for this year and the entire company is so elated that they won the coveted award, which will make its products, ship engines, diesel engines, electronics communication equipment and environmental installations well known for their excellent qualities throughout the country, increasing demand for the products.
President Chung Dong-hak said he and all the staff of the company are very happy they won the top prize in the area of quality management system. He said what brought the company such a great award were creativity and challenging spirit that we had to make efforts to spur the company's performance upward amid the worsening economic conditions day by day both at home and abroad.
The company will make further efforts to make reform and change to upgrade the quality management system and innovate the business process through the 6 sigma campaign and PI (performance innovation) so that the company would become a global top ship engine maker from just being a top domestic engine maker.
The company said one of its key management objectives is making itself a global top engine maker in 2012, which is why it adopted the quality management system to build a sustainable environment management following an overall diagnosis of the company's systems.
The company decided to throw a hat in the ring to go for the quality management award this year in a bid to collect all commentaries on its quality management system from various experts in the field so that the company can set up the direction for its quality management activities.
It took about three years for STX Engine to build MB model, the 6 sigma programs and other reform programs and from 2006, the company pushed the quality management programs in earnest benchmarking the MBNQA evaluation standard, a global quality management model, to realize the best practice in all of the business processes of the company. The company has been able to improve the quality of its engines and build the competitive edge by achieving the vision it set based on the quality management programs. The company has been pushing the management reform and changes to achieve the vision as fast as it can.
This year, in particular, the company has decided to speed the reform activity by completing the PI activities successfully and enhance its competitive edge by setting up an integrated information system with the ERP system as a base.
From 2007, the company has been practicing the supply chain quality management under the live-and-let-live policy with vendors. The company made continuous efforts to improve the program so that in the end, it will be able to create the company's own STCX SCQM model for all of its vendors.
The company is operating three customer centers including one in Ningbo, China, to take care of customer and market demands. The company developed the environmentally friendly NOx engine and high-pressure and voltage power generator engines and they are being marketed.
The company has also been publishing reports on its sustainable growth from 2007 and distributing them to interested customers and those who have interest in the company's operations to put into practice the sustainable management seeking environment protection, social responsibility and economic growth.
Thanks to the management reform activities, the company boosted the operating profit to 8.1 percent in 2007 and is expected to record 12.5 percent increase this year and per employee productivity will be increased to 14.2 billion won this year from 12.5 billion won in 2007.
The claim rate is projected to be cut to 0.64 percent this year from 0.71 percent in 2007. Lead time will also be reduced to 15 days from 21 days in 2007 and 22.5 days in 2006.
Intangible effects from the management reform program are the company got comments from outside experts on its management reform programs; all employees of the company understood the management reform programs and volunteered to participate in the programs; and the company secured competitive edge to become a global engine maker. nw

President Chung Dong-hak of STX Engine Co. receives the award.