BAck
Chapter
In sports, it’s all about winning by coming first or being the most skilled.
Of course, talent has a role to play, but mostly it is all about take care of and maintaining it. But more than anything else, hard training, constant improvements and having a clear goal, have an enormous impact in how you become a winner.
If we take handball, as an example. At the start of this year 2022, with great excitement, we had the opportunity of following the Swedish men’s national team on their journey to winning gold and becoming European champions.
The road to the top has been lined with countless training hours in which they fine-tuned their technical play, practised their teamwork and sharpened their tactical tricks, as well as improveing their strengths, both individually and as a team.
Or how about Armand Duplantis, world record holder in pole vault. A very complicated sport! But Duplantis is constantly showing us that countless hours of training, regular fine-tuning of technique and improvement of both his strength and flexibility, acting on feedback from his team, together with his joy in and understanding of the sport, gives him what he needs to reach the heights and goals he set up.
The similarities between these different athletes are many. A clear goal, a team that works together, irrespective of whether it is a team of athletes or an individual who puts in many hours of training and makes constant improvements. A prerequisite is a well-coordinated, inspired team where everyone involved is pulling in the same direction and has the same goal.
And with that said, let’s take a look at Rimaster. We are operating in a world where we meet our competitors in a constant battle over who is best able to fulfil the customers’ wishes, in terms of, for example, speed, simplicity and flexibility.
Being a winner is something you earn through goal-oriented work and constant development. We can also do that at Rimaster.
But the world and our competition are never standing still.
So, we can’t afford ever to stagnate – we need to constantly continue to maintain and develop our strengths and our skills.
There’s a constant battle going on in the marketplace between various companies eager to sell their products or services. Competitveness are means that companies uses to create the biggest attractive image of themselves as possible.
The buyer’s role in a company is to evaluate the various options and choose the one that best suits their company.
Rimaster is of course not alone in the market of system integration for special vehicles. Therefore our goal is to generate benefits for the customer, so that we become their No. 1 choice.
We achieve customer benefit, as it is called, by creating several ways in for the customer, enabling us to be an excellent total-solution supplier.
When the customer feels that we have fully grasped what their business and products are about and that we can provide the services they are looking for, we create mutual understanding and insight. With proximity, we have a strong grip on the competition.
We create competitiveness by being responsive to the customer’s needs and wants, and by translating these into competitive solutions.
We create customer benefits by proposing improvements to technical product solutions, and by integrating intelligent subsystems, such as riFuse, or other proprietary products, into the customer’s system solution.
Our ability to combine our service areas is the key to achieveing this.
As we go on in this section of the text, we explain how we work at Rimaster with our competitive means and how we succeed in winning the battle for customers as we compete with other players on the market.
Since Rimaster is a “one-stop-shop” supplier that offers total solutions, it is important to understand that all sections under the heading Competitive Means are sub-components for Rimaster to stand strong in the competitive pressure that prevails on the market.
Our customers often know what our products and services should cost.
They already have an understanding based on experience and/or through contact with our competitors.
Consequently, if we are going to sell to a customer, we need to adapt our prices to what has already become established in the market, i.e., we need to “market adapt”.
So, in order to be able to sell at market-adapted prices, it is necessary for us to then create the right production conditions, to ensure that we have the right material price, which we can maintain through smart cost-conscious and planned purchases.
We also need to be pro-active, think one step ahead, dare to take the initiative and offer customers alternative and smart solutions, and thus arrive at a price that the customer finds appealing.
One important prerequisite for being able to keep up with the competition is that we integrate ourselves into our customer’s value chain. This means that we not only deliver what the customer expects, but also show that we can deliver alternative solutions that can create customer benefits.
This makes the customer feel that we want know what they want, and that there are benefits from allowing Rimaster to be involved in the development of both products and services, which can lead to a development for the company.
It therefore presupposes that Rimaster at the very least delivers products and services of good quality, in combination with the delivery being on time and at the right price.
It is in that work that trust towards the customer begins.
In order to be the total solution supplier that we want to be, it is important that, as an organisation, we are well informed about our customers, so that we know what they want and what they themselves are capable of, how they wish to develop and what their expectations are of us.
In this way, we maintain and develop Rimaster’s application knowledge. It enables us to keep up with how we should act in the future to maintain the trust the customer has in us.
Placing a focus on strategic work is also a part of this. A strategic buyer works primarily with route selection – which supplier is the one we should choose to satisfy all the requirements we have regarding price, delivery method, delivery times, purchase quantities and frequencies, and so on. Planned purchasing work in accordance with the plan that has been strategically developed.
One important aspect that we can use as competitive means is the benefits to be gained from all our services, and allowing the collaboration flow within the Rimaster organisation. Having such a broad of knowledge and experience can make us unique and interesting for the customer.
Rimaster has developed into a global organisation by working closely with our customers, and has followed them in their globalisation. This has led to Rimaster being a global player in several markets, which means that we are globally rigged.
Having a local presence and, being close to our customers, gives us a competitive structure and creates competitiveness in relation to other suppliers.
To continue to strengthen the bond and growth along with our customers, we will continue to transfer and move information between each other and to develop our ability and knowledge to transfer products and drawings where the need exists, regardless of where in the organisation we are working.
One obvious goal is that the customer gets the right production unit from the very start.
Promotion is about our communication with our world, both customers and the society in a bigger perspective.
Everything we do and everything we say is a part of communication. When people see us in advertisements, on websites or social media, in the letters and emails we write, and see our attitude towards our surroundings, irrespective of our role in the company, we are contributing to the perception people have of Rimaster.
The most important communication channel in our work with customers is the meetings we have with them. At Rimaster, we conduct various types of meetings – all to improve and facilitate the contact we have with our customers. These include Strategy meetings, Quality meetings, Improvement meetings, and so on.
As you have seen in the earlier part of the Master of Simplicity education, our competitiveness has a lot to do with the success we achieve in being perceived and how well the products and services we deliver match up against the customer’s expectations.
That our competitors also strive to deliver good quality on time and at the right price comes, therefore, as no surprise. This is a prerequisite for all participants in the marketplace.
In view of this, it is important that we can differentiate ourselves from our competitors by means of our commitment, our focus on solutions, our proximity and simplicity, and our willingness to develop and grow.
It’s a component of the Rimaster concept “High mix Low volume”.
This must be visible and something that permeates all of our daily work carried out by all of our employees.
Thanks to your employment with us, YOU ARE A PART OF RIMASTER, and through your professionalism, you contribute to demonstrating to the customer and our environment that we are working in accordance with our vision and the values of the Rimaster family.
As an employee and a part of Rimaster, we can all contribute to the company’s competence assurance by working at developing our own competence, demonstrating our curiosity and willingness to learn, exchanging experiences with our colleagues both within the department and in other Rimaster companies, and daring to take initiatives and highlight new ideas.
Rimaster is an innovative partner and employer that creates proximity and simplicity for our customers, in a global and developing industry, through collaboration for development, with team spirit and respect, with a solution-focused foundation and always based on our professionalism.
As part of increasing the feeling of being part of Rimaster and as employees of Rimaster being able to influence and contribute to their own and the company's development, we work according to the concept and with the tool "Performance Management".
Performance Management is an ongoing process based on the principle that each employee should have personal goals, which are in line with Rimaster’s business goals.
We believe that, both as a company and as employees of Rimaster, these personal goals and our involvement in regular dialogue and feedback are major contributing factors in our work towards clearer common goals and in achieving the strategic goals that have been set for the Group.
Our purpose in using the Performance Management process is to help motivate all employees, irrespective of role, to be involved in the entire development process – from goal setting and the planning of competence development, to implementation, follow-up and evaluation of performance and goal fulfilment.
By using Performance Management, we want to provide the appropriate conditions for all employees to develop in their work.
It requires openness, cooperation and commitment among all within Rimaster, which we believe contributes greatly to the continued development of Rimaster's entire organisation.
The Performance Management process is included as part of the yearly cycle developed at Rimaster.