Triple certification to ISO 9001 – ISO 14001 – OHSAS 18001

BUHLMANN is a pioneer in the Steel Trading Market

Besides quality assurance measures for the products, the largest constructor of facilities in the areas of power station construction, chemicals, petrochemicals and the gas industry demands of its suppliers proof of safe and healthy working conditions for the employees as well as active environmental protection measures in production and to an ever greater degree. So it does not just have to be proven that a good product has been delivered, but the supplier must also offer a guarantee in addition that all national and international standards of operational safety for machines has been reached and all required measures for avoiding accidents as well as pollution of the air, water and soil have been met.

The international standards here are DIN EN ISO 9001 – quality management, DIN EN ISO 14001 – environmental protection and OHSAS 18001 occupational health and safety. If one has all three certificates, one speaks about triple certification or integrated management systems.

BUHLMANN, as a systems supplier for raw materials, has, besides the long-standing certification of its quality system to DIN EN ISO 9001, always fostered high standards internally for the observation of environmental protection guidelines and occupational safety. Heike Nack, who has been the safety officer and EHS manager of the BUHLMANN GROUP since March the 1st 2009, implemented the necessary improvements to individual areas of weakness in a short space of time together with the branch managers, so that TÜV Nord was able to award the management with the coveted certificate in August.

Besides the quality of its products, BUHLMANN is characterised by modern crane facilities and saws, well-lit warehouses and production halls with a high degree of daylight, a high standard of safety clothing for its employees, ergonomic office working spaces and active environmental protection measures through consistent separation of waste and recycling of steel materials in the form of scrap collection.

After all the formalities have been completed all documents for the setting up of the business were able to be presented to the local authorities at the end of July. Since September 1st 2009 BUHLMANN China has been officially approved and there is now just various authorities details to get through in order to be able to trade. At the end of July the office moved into new rooms in the Grand Gateway, a modern building in the heart of Xuziahui, a business centre in Shanghai which fulfills all the requirements of a technologicially modern and productive working environment.

From left to right: Martin Zui, Driver BUHLMANN China, Bernhard Buhlmann, CEO BUHLMANN GROUP, Robert-Jan Stüssel, Managing Director BUHLMANN China, Karl Buhlmann, CEO BUHLMANN GROUP, Jimmy Chen, Sales BUHLMANN China

The team has also changed: At the end of July a new colleague, Louis Young, started in sales. He brings many years of experience in the steel trade and last worked at Benteler Distribution in Shanghai. In October BUHLMANN were able to acquire an sales support assistant for Louis Young’s team. In recent years Jimmy Shen has worked for Jiuli, a large manufacturer of seamless stainless steel pipes. He worked in the certification office before working in sales and therefore brings with him a lot of experience in the area of quality assurance. Chao Li, who has been with BUHLMANN in Shanghai since November 1st 2008 and was the first official Chinese employee at BUHLMANN in China, has settled in well. He takes care of buying in China, as well as quality assurance. At the end of the year he will receive assistance from Germany in this area.

Since September 1st 2009, BUHLMANN has rented a warehouse in Shanghai. In the south of Shanghai, not far from the deep water harbour and the chemical park, Robert-Jan Stüssel, Managing Director BUHLMANN China, found a 6,000 square metre warehouse in the spring of this year. The warehouse was already equipped with six cranes, which could move up to 30 tonnes; the ideal prerequisite for serving customers BUHLMANN-like in China. In the coming weeks there will be a lot of things to do: equipping the warehouse, finding the additional personnel for it and, of course, most importantly acquiring further customers and interested parties for BUHLMANN China.

In the new facility, there is now a 500-squaremetres available for mechanical production. Here, the lathe and milling machines, as well as the machining centre and corresponding storage racks are operationally ready. The facility itself offers enough room for the new submerged automatic welding machine, a crane, the tube saw, the annealing furnace, the inductive annealing units and several welding stations. Additionally, the new SmartPlant Isometrics, Spoolgen, PICODA computer programmes, as well as SolidCAM2,5+CAM 3D have the advantage of tremendously simplifying and shortening work processes. “The investments have been worth it because the production capacity has practically doubled and through optimized machine technology, orders can be fi lled more effi ciently,” says Heller. In addition, components weighing about 30 tons can now be prefabricated.”

The BUHLMANN GROUP is constantly growing. Since the end of March, the Russian subsidiary of the BUHLMANN GROUP has been officially registered. Sergey Sherbakov manages the new office in Samara. Sergey Sherbakov is an engineer and studied industrial heat energetics at the polytechnical university in Samara. From his previous career he possesses a broad knowledge of the tube field as it pertains to the oil refining industry and the energy industry as well as good contacts in the industry branches relevant to the BUHLMANN GROUP. Since April, OOO BUHLMANN Rus, is being supported by Roman Naumov.

The BUHLMANN plant in Duisburg (Germany) has received an excellent evaluation  ith respect to quality and dedication. Siemens - Energy Sector, located in Erlangen, recently placed BUHLMANN in its highest Siemens Supplier Evaluation category: “Outstanding”. In its latest supplier evaluation, Siemens – Energy Sector uses the term ‘outstanding’ to describe BUHLMANN Duisburg. “An integrated supplier management system,” as Siemens puts it, “creates the conditions for an overall optimization of the relationship with suppliers.”

In order to ensure that a supplier complies with the performance requirements of Siemens throughout the mutual business relationship, Siemens periodically evaluates the supplier’s actions based on criteria that are standardized across the corporation. “The period evaluation depicts the supplier’s past performance and comprises 16 compulsory standard criteria.” The current supplier evaluation covers the period to September 2008. BUHLMANN achieved excellent results in the four categories of purchasing, quality, logistics and technology. “We’re very proud to have managed this achievement with such an important business partner,” says Dirk Formella, Director of Projects in Duisburg. In the quality category in particular, BUHLMANN fulfilled 100 per cent of the Siemens criteria in the areas of quality assurance, service and cooperation. “This success belongs to the entire BUHLMANN project team. The positive result will serve as an incentive and a challenge for us going forward not just to fulfil customer expectations, but to exceed them whenever possible.”

There is general uncertainty at the moment about the future standard for materials concerning flanges according to the new standard of EN 1092-1. The P245GH is also being offered as a basic material for C steel flanges in addition to the P250GH. This uncertainty has arisen because only the P245GH was listed as the standard forging material in the first edition of EN 1092-1 in June 2002. The P250GH with its better metallurgical properties has only been supplemented by way of the national appendix in the presently valid editions of November 2007 and September 2008 because of numerous appeals by manufacturers.

The P245GH is being primarily offered by factories from the Asian area and mainly the People´s Republic of China, which is concentrating on producing economical standard products. It differs in essential elements from the P250GH, which has chemical and mechanical parameters identical to the C22.8 that was the predominant material in the market previously. The P245GH is not absolutely stabilized with aluminium, in contrast to the C22.8 or P250GH: the matter concerns a semi-stabilized material as a rule. It has essentially lower values with carbon and considerably higher values with manganese than the C22.8 or P250GH. As a result, its chemical and metallurgical properties rather correspond to American materials and the former C22.3, which became technically obsolete in Germany many years ago.

The market is clearly tending towards the fully stabilized P250GH C steel (1.0460) -which is the successor of the C22.8 - for pressure-controlled purposes. A new material data sheet entitled “Flanges according to DIN EN 1092-1 made from the C22.8 or P250GH steel” was also published by the VdTÜV* in June 2008 for this reason, which compares the P250GH with the C22.8. As a result, the P250GH should be utilized for applications according to the guideline on pressure equipment, in connection with national sets of rules like the material data sheet 350/3 published by the VdTÜV.

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