How we work at AVK
An international and informal working environment
AVK is a global group of companies with sales and production companies in more than 100 countries. AVK International A/S is responsible for Continental Europe and headquarters for the region. The international atmosphere is pronounced – every day, we receive customers and colleagues from all over the world, and at the same time, we are locally anchored, since many employees live in the local community. At AVK, we have a relaxed and informal working environment and a flat organisational structure, and we do our utmost to give new employees a good start at AVK.
A world of valves
Our production facilities in Galten/Skovby are our showroom factory that we proudly show to visitors from all over the world. We work in two shifts in our production and produce approx. 550,000 valves a year, which are mainly sold in Continental Europe, China and the Middle East.
We have minimised most of the monotonous, repeated and manual work procedures in our production, and we use automated production processes more and more to reduce lead time and costs in order to improve competitiveness. Several employees in our production are capable of programming robots, and they participate in the installation of our production lines.
Naturally, we also focus on product development to keep on optimising and extending our product portfolio, and we complete approx. 25 development projects a year. Furthermore, we constantly focus on improving the working environment and on reducing energy consumption.
LEAN
AVK International A/S started its LEAN journey in 2016 and since then, the LEAN philosophy has had our full priority. LEAN is all about placing customers at the centre of attention, and we strive to fulfil our customers’ needs in the shortest time with minimum stock. More specifically, we want to deliver competitive high-quality products in due time. We treat everyone with respect and believe that everybody does the best for the company. LEAN is everyone, everywhere and every day.
We work with different LEAN tools with the purpose of creating transparency in the company and ensuring focus throughout the organisation. Therefore, it is a strategic goal to anchor LEAN in our company culture; and one of the steps to get to the next level is to train all employees and leaders in LEAN and to have LEAN boards in all departments with structured follow-up on key performance indicators.
At AVK International A/S, LEAN means working with processes, tools, change, coaching, standards and behaviours. We work with strategy deployment, performance management, problem-solving, improvements and “go-look-see”.
