BizTimes: What do see as your most important responsibility to customers?
Stephan Achs: “I believe we have a multifaceted responsibility. First, to intimately know and understand our customers’ business and their challenges. To learn what keeps them up at night and what we can do to help them be most successful. To know and clearly communicate our vision and that Super Steel has a culture centered on passionately leveraging the ‘why’ in what we do. Finally, by championing servant leadership our purpose and expectation are to help remove hurdles and streamline our teams to do what they do best; develop effective, innovative, and high value solutions for our customers.”
BizTimes: What do you see as your most important responsibility to your employees?
Achs: “Being an employee-centric organization, at Super Steel we strive to provide the safest place to work as well as develop truly rewarding career paths for all employees, thereby remaining viable in the marketplaces we serve. Our commitment to this starts at the top, leading by example. Through transparency and by consistently saying what we’ll do, and then doing what we say. Pretty basic stuff, but what too many leaders and organizations often overlook. Bottom line engaged and happy employees make engaged and happy customers – in that order.”
BizTimes: What did your company learn from the COVID crisis? How is your company stronger?
Achs: “COVID brought to the surface many of the things’ leaders knew yet may have been too busy to address. We rapidly learned how to operate much leaner. Likewise understood that a smaller and more competitive workforce elevated the importance of putting in place things that would keep the talent you have engaged and inspired as well as attract the best new talent. Super Steel quickly realized the importance of doing the right things surrounding optimizing the work they perform, their working environment and safety. To remain viable and competitive in manufacturing, we also learned that having the required capabilities and reliable capacity requires upskilling the workforce and automating wherever possible.”
BizTimes: What opportunities/challenges do you see on the horizon for your industry?
Achs: “Over many years our world has been getting smaller through advancements in technology and logistics. Yet, in recent years the challenges of having a global supply base have become greater. Here’s where many opportunities Super Steel and North American manufacturing companies are developing. Decades ago, the push was to source low-cost products overseas, now it’s starting to come back due to many geopolitical realities, and as costs have continued to rise overseas, onshore costs continue to drop. This also poses a significant challenge toward effectively increasing capacity as well as developing the needed skilled workforce to build things and run an increasingly greater number of automated factories.”
10910 N Industrial Dr. • Mequon, WI 53092
(414) 355-4800 • supersteel.com
