Code of Conduct

Corporate Code of Conduct

The corporate Code of Conduct of our group of companies is a self-commitment of all our employees. It is intended to ensure that guidelines, responsibilities and duties are properly observed. The Code of Conduct guides our commitment to excellent technical and commercial performance, guarantees that ethical standards are upheld, and thereby contributes to experiencing fulfilment and satisfaction in and through our day-to-day work.

Respect for human rights, protection for the health of every individual and an explicit commitment to active protection of the natural environment form the bases of all our action. Our guiding principle is to constantly further develop our company while paying equally constant attention to ensuring that the way we handle resources is a sustainable one. Our goal is the satisfaction of our customers.

Quality Policy and Continual Improvement

The continued existence and the growth of our company are both founded on the high quality of our products and services. Essential preconditions of our commercial success are the meeting of the quality demands of our customers and the proof of this sustained product and service quality via a certified Quality Management system as per DIN EN ISO9001. The customer is always at the center of all our efforts. We want to offer our customers high-quality mechanical plant, products and services with a fair price-performance ratio, along with comprehensive after-sales service and continuous ongoing support in every way. We always fulfil the commitments we make to our customers and we actively promote trust-building measures that improve our partnership with them. We observe and comply with all legal regulations and norms as well those requirements set either by the customer or by the company internally.

We seek to raise the quality-awareness of our employees and are convinced that every one of these employees shares responsibility for the quality of our products. Considerations of quality must be included, in a planned way, in all phases of the company’s provisions of the products and services it offers. Suggestions for improvement and ideas from all levels of the organization are evaluated and implemented. We promote cooperation between all levels of the organization through motivation of all employees, through training sessions and through constant improvement of the exchange of information. No measure taken with a view to lowering costs should impact negatively on quality; our means to minimizing costs should rather be the avoidance of defects and a smooth execution of all internal work processes.

It is incumbent on all employees to apply those procedures that are described in the documentation and the accompanying materials. Legal and official regulations are always to be complied with. The management system is regularly checked to ensure that it is complete, effective and properly applied. With a view to achieving a permanent improvement all employees are urged to take an active part in this system and to propose improvements. We look on defects and mistakes as opportunities for such improvement.

Our goal is the continuous improvement of our company on all levels. This allows us to continue to pursue and refine existing goals and also to recognize and to set new goals. All employees must orient their particular professional activities toward these goals. Supervision of whether the goal in question is being achieved will be effected by management via regular checks on observance of rules and procedures and of effectiveness.

 

Customers

Personal advice and precise consultation on all required details are the most important factors for a fair and successful cooperation with our customers. The setting of concrete goals and milestones should be the catalyst that initiates constant expansive growth for our customers. We passionately pursue this goal. We solemnly undertake to maintain absolute secrecy regarding confidential customer information, results of experiments, newly-developed products or services, viewings and demonstrations and contents of conversations imparted to us in confidence and as part of the process of commissioning orders, both now and in the future. In this way, third parties are prevented from making use of said data. This agreement can be summed up as an explicit duty of confidentiality.

 

Suppliers

Wherever this is possible, we also ask our suppliers to introduce and implement similar principles to those described above in respect of taking responsibility for safety, health and environmental protection.

 

Employees

Behind our success stands a highly-motivated and committed team of employees characterized by creativity and strong identification with the company. Short, non-bureaucratic paths of communication and rapid decisions make their contribution here. Regular exchange of information, dialogue instead of conflict, and the inclusion of employees in decision processes are all essential elements of our corporate culture. Discrimination or harassment of any kind – especially relative to religion, age, sex, origin, nationality or handicap – are without exception prohibited. All employees have equal rights and an equal claim to respect and appreciation of their persons. The foundations for this are tolerance and a respectful manner of interacting with one another.

We attempt to always put ourselves in the place of the other, thus promoting reciprocal respect and recognition and ensuring a cooperation characterized by trust and consequently by success. We make possible independent working on the employee’s own initiative and aspire to be constantly acquiring new, specialized knowledge which we then apply in a way that is oriented to results. Our flat hierarchy and our allowing of the maximum possible freedom to our employees mean that progressive ideas can give rise to optimal integral solutions for our customers.

 

Occupational Safety and Environmental Protection

Ensuring health and safety and environmental protection, along with reducing to a minimum those dangers posed to our employees and to third parties which can lead to personal injury, occupational illness, work-related health risks, damage or destruction of property or harm to the environment, is an indispensable precondition for the carrying-out of all our business activities. Every case of personal accident or damage to the environment is one case too many. These two types of goal are considered within the SMB group to be of equal importance with one another. With the present Code of Conduct concerning occupational safety and environmental protection we want to emphasize this aspiration. The health and safety of our employees are, for our company, goals that occupy the same rank of importance as the quality of our products and our economic and commercial success.

With a view to achieving these goals the following guidelines were developed:

  • Constant efforts should be made to recognize early on, and to counteract, occupational illnesses by (among other methods) regular medical supervision of all employees.
  • Accident prevention and health protection maintain and enhance our employees’ ability and willingness to perform their work well and thus make a decisive contribution to our company’s competitiveness.
  • Ensuring occupational safety is part of the task of management. But it also counts among the duties of all employees to cooperate in achieving, on their own responsibility and to the best of their ability, the goal of safety at work.  
  • There is no contradiction between occupational safety and successful economic activity.

Management and employees are in agreement about the fact that the goals of occupational safety, including that of designing and organizing work-processes in a human-friendly manner, are goals that must be pursued cooperatively. Our managers aim to create a work environment which encourages and promotes both responsibility and personal competence for quality, work safety and health-protection within the work process itself. Care is taken to maintain a constant process of improvement for the company management systems.

 

Special Stipulations

Child Labor

SMB International GmbH, MBA Instruments GmbH and SMB Service GmbH reject child labor in any and every form. In the case where no higher age limit comes to be established by law, no person of an age such that they are still legally required to attend school, or under the age of 15 years, is to be employed. In the special cases where underage persons are indeed permitted to be employed, company management must guarantee that, depending on and correspondent to said persons’ ages, the applicable working conditions, working hours and rates of pay, and any such further laws and regulations as may respectively apply, are observed and complied with.

Forced Labor

Forced labor or non-voluntary labor – including work performed by prisoners, by those obliged to perform fatigue duty, or by those obliged to work to pay off a debt, along with other forms of compulsory labor – are not tolerated by the company in any shape or form.

Non-Discrimination

SMB International GmbH, MBA Instruments GmbH and SMB Service GmbH recognize and respect cultural differences. All employees are – be it in matters of initial employment, promotion, remuneration, benefits, occupational training and development, dismissal or termination of contract – to be judged, as a basic principle, by no other criterion besides their individual capabilities and qualifications alone.

Harassment and Mistreatment

No employee is to be exposed to physical, sexual, psychological or verbal harassment or mistreatment. Every form of harassment and bullying in the workplace is unacceptable.

 

Confidentiality

SMB International GmbH, MBA Instruments GmbH and SMB Service GmbH on many occasions solemnly undertake, vis-à-vis their customers, to keep all internally reciprocally communicated information regarding, or knowledge about, said customers indeed internal. The companies are, for example, frequently explicitly urged to prevent the exploitation of such information by third parties. Particularly concerned here are data arising from discussions. There is incumbent on all employees, insofar as they are not already explicitly bound to this by their contract of employment, a solemn obligation to confidentiality. It is, in fact, a general principle that all customer-related information – especially information concerning groups of customers belonging to the same or to similar branches of activity – is to be treated with the strictest confidentiality. Excepted here is information which has already been made public or that is already a matter of common knowledge. In the case where an employee feels uncertain about whether a particular document is to be classed within one of these latter categories or not, he must immediately inform his immediate superior, or some other person(s) in higher authority, of his uncertainty in this regard.

 

Implementation and Compliance

Our management system applies a large number of international sets of standards and regulations. It comprises, for example, the requirements set by  

  • DIN EN ISO 9001
  • OHSAS 18001
  • the SCC set of regulations
  • the regulations applying to specialized companies under the Federal German Water Act
  • Directive 2014/34/EU

along with the stipulations of various other sets of national rules and regulations.

Company management solemnly undertakes to carry out all orders and commissions in a manner that is accordant with what has been contractually agreed to, with the stipulations of the law, with standard engineering practice, and with the specific demands and requirements of the customer.  

This manner of proceeding ensures that those organizational, commercial and technical processes which tend to have an effect on quality, safety and health protection goals are planned, managed, and properly checked and that contractually agreed requirements are in fact complied with.  

  • Every employee is personally responsible for the implementation of, and compliance with, the corporate Code of Conduct in his own area of work.
  • Every employee has the right to seek out and speak to a member of company management regarding matters related to compliance with the corporate Code of Conduct.

By means of our documentation, our intensive training measures, and other supporting material we aim to ensure that our policy in this regard is, both at all levels of the company and among our customers, understood, implemented, and maintained. Management thus approves and authorizes the corporate Code of Conduct in the version and formulation presented here and declares this Code of Conduct to be henceforth in effect.

 

Quickborn, March 26, 2019

Andreas Heckel (Managing Director)
Jens Hachmann (Technical Director)
Gerrit von Appen (Commercial Director)
Arne Hoops (Financial Director)