Lifting the Standard of Efficiency

Our Lean based Business System, known as the APM Terminals' Way of Working, is the backbone of our ambition to be the World´s Best Terminal Company. We strive for every process and every action to be directly translated into value for our customers - with no waste.

Our Way of Working was introduced to APM Terminals in 2018. Ever since, thousands of our frontline and office employees have been trained in the Lean methodologies and are successfully using these tools and skills to identify process waste and drive continuous improvement. Our Lean tools and methodologies that form the foundation of our Way of Working are used across all terminals, creating standardisation and one way of improving.

We are continually looking to lift our standards of efficiency and reliability and to create more value for our customers with zero waste. Our Lean methods make waste buckets in our processes visible and our highly trained and motivated people work to resolve these. I refer to this as 'all brains and hearts in the game'.

Keith Svendsen, CEO

It all starts with waste

The basis of Lean operations is a relentless identification and reduction of waste. Waste refers to everything we can identify in the process that does not add value for you, our customers. At APM Terminals we have identified eight types of waste: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over processing, Over production, Defects and Skills. We continually strive to reduce waste and improve our processes, so we can serve our customers better every day.

Improvements in these areas are driven by Kaizen (continuous improvement) Events. These are the beating heart of Lean. Opportunities for improvement are endless. Even if we think we are already doing well, we encourage our employees to look for better ways of doing things and seek perfection. And although we know perfection will be unattainable, by chasing perfection, we will reach excellence.

Way of Working House

Our Way of Working house shows our strong commitment to our customers. We start with a solid foundation of standards and stability. The roof of our house is our deep customer focus.

By truly understanding what our customer´s needs are, we drive the right improvements to be able to serve with the highest safety, the best quality, the best delivery at the lowest cost. Our goal is for every customer to experience the high level of performance and reliability in all our terminals globally.

wow-house

Just in Time is our focus on optimizing production. By creating continuous flow in our process, we eliminate waste and focus on our customer´s needs. APM Terminals is the first terminal company to implement Continuous Flow in operations, providing an efficient and reliable output for our customers worldwide.

Our Lean Academy develops and upskills our people to be the best versions of themselves every day. We trust our employees are the experts on the jobs and empower them to look out for improvement opportunities to make their jobs safer and better. We create an engaging workplace that builds on the creativity, passion and problem-solving capabilities of our people.

The result is that EVERYONE across our organisation is continually looking for areas of 'waste'. Being skilled in identifying waste is becoming increasingly important on our journey to be the World´s Best Terminal Company.

Jidoka is how we optimize quality. Through autonomation and human touch we ensure that our products and services are free of defects.

Not to be confused with automation, autonomation is a self-reliant work system that is designed to prevent the user/system from making errors, detecting abnormalities/errors and raising an alarm, or on detecting abnormality triggering a rectification mechanism to correct the error/variation.

We have formalised how we continuously improve to create more value for our customers and improve our Way of Working itself. We do this through a Kaizen Ecosystem.

This involves a combination of Kaizen Events. These involve everyone, from managers to floor staff, every day and every location to continuously review and improve processes. For more clearly defined issues that require a more radical step change an event may involve a group of employees intensively for a number of days.

The outcomes provide value to everyone in the organization and to our customers. Kaizen Events are directly linked to our company strategy and as such, a critical enabler to success.

Every colleague is encouraged to always be thinking of new ways to improve their performance. Then, this loop repeats, further refining what we do and how we do it. The elements and methods that comprise Way of Working are used across terminals globally, creating a common language and one way of working.

Without standards in place, performance levels can vary and customer's aren't guaranteed a consistent high level of service. Our Way of Working sharpens our customer focus, enabling an ever-high level of performance for our customers worldwide.

Standard Work
We use a process called Standard Work to establish, communicate, maintain, and improve uniform standards across our organisation. These standards as a starting point for future improvement at any one of our terminals around the world.

Training Within Industry
To ensure that all our people follow processes consistently, we are standardizing how they do their jobs and ensuring that they faithfully adhere to these standards. We accelerate standardization through a hands-on training program called Training Within Industry (TWI).

Standards are core to APM Terminal´s Safer, Better, Bigger Strategy. With the standardization program we deliver what we promise - a stable and predictable service to our customers, contributing to a safe and efficient execution of the work by increasing the competency of our job experts.

Every day across our terminals, performance is assessed by a group of employees, using visualisations of four customer-facing priorities: Safety, Quality, Delivery and Cost (SQDC). In some instances we track progress multiple times per day.

These are assessed this exact sequence to ensure we prioritise correctly. Imagine, if we delivered the wrong container (Quality) on time (Delivery), you, the customer wouldn't be happy, even if it was Cost effective. SQDC helps us to be more customer centric by addressing smaller problems before they get bigger, enabling escalation early on and removing obstacles.

Without standards in place, performance levels can vary. Way of Working sharpens our customer focus, enabling an ever-high level of performance for our customers worldwide.