Adoption of Globally Unified Process Standards: The Case of the Production Company Marabu

(a) Situation faced: Marabu is a worldwide manufacturer of printing inks and creative colors with 16 subsidiaries and sales partners in more than 100 countries. After a restructuring project, subsidiaries were more closely aligned with the headquarters, and the company faces the challenge of unifying the organization’s process landscape to align with the parent company’s quality requirements. Marabu planned to implement a global quality and environmental management system according to ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, so it was searching for a software that was capable of multilingualism and that would permit local deviations in processes and multisite certification. (b) Action taken: Marabu opted for a management software that works with an innovative multilingual concept and enables the harmonization of company-wide standards. The implementation of the software-based IMS took place under a tight schedule. A uniform handbook structure was developed for all sites that included a unified numbering system and a binding style guide for modeling processes. (c) Results achieved: A few months after the rollout, the first sites were successfully certified, followed by additional sites. The transparent modeling of globally uniform processes, including local variants, is now increasingly carried out in a decentralized manner; only the final testing and approval are performed centrally. The new system contains more than 300 processes and co-applicable documents. (d) Lessons learned: With the introduction of the multilingual management software, Marabu set uniform standards worldwide. The use of the software transfers part of the responsibility for the processes to the international sites, and more employee responsibility has led to more acceptance and to a lived management system that drives continuous process improvement.