Quality Manager for Welding Department

Fredrik Enberg works as a welder at Huddig since 2005 and has been a quality manager for the department for eleven months.

"Being a quality manager means that I am called upon for if something is wrong or if there is any doubt about the quality of a detail. I then inspect it and then make an assessment as to whether the part can be adjusted or should be scrapped. If it can be repaired, we will grind up the welding and redo it, otherwise, it will be discarded."

Fredrik started at Huddig for the first time in 2005. After a few years, he left the company in order to work at other companies for a period of time. He later returned to Huddig, mainly for the sake of culture and product.

"I started at Huddig right after going to the HIT program at high school (Industrial Engineering Program). After five years here I tried some other things but came back after a little over a year. The culture at Huddig is special and the environment pushes me to get better every day because we develop a premium product. I missed that elsewhere. Because the factory here is small and we track all the details, we have incredibly close contact between the departments. I value the fact that we are a tight team that works well together a lot."

Fredrik switches between working on the railroad group on the loader group. To constantly maintain high quality is a major focus of the departments.

"Always keeping a high quality is to have pressure on yourself, and that in itself becomes a challenge that I like. It takes about 10-12h to weld a boom together and it is of course very important to pay close attention to the work all the time. I value quality and am very thorough, I would probably say that I am a bit pedantic. It is needed in this job."

At Huddig's welding department most things are welded by hand, apart from longer welding parts. In welding audits, Huddig gets high marks, which Fredrik says creates pride in the departments.

"We don't have a welding robot but weld everything by hand. That's the charm of it, to challenge yourself at work every day and deliver awesome quality. We have aids if we are to make very long welds but otherwise, we weld completely manually. We have just had an audited and received good grades, which is proof that we are doing a good job – that feels really good to know and carry with you in your everyday work".

For a little over a year, the work in Huddig's factory has been led through daily management/control. This means that the staff themselves set up the work, take care of the coating and solve any problems that arise.

"There has been good flexibility and staff participation since we introduced a new way of working. We cooperate better now as people circulate between the different workgroups and I feel that we learn and solve problems faster this way", he concludes.