August 24, 2015. Heads of Volzhsky Pipe Plant (a member enterprise of Pipe Metallurgical Company/TMK) technical and quality control departments in TMK’s Russian, European, Middle Eastern, and U.S. divisions met to look at results produced by the set of quality and efficiency enhancement measures taken in the first half of the year, the company press service reports.

The company managed to keep up with the metal-spending and product quality targets in the six months of 2015, despite the fact that the target figures are getting stricter by the year. An analysis of the company’s quality management system performance made it clear that customers are getting increasingly more satisfied, due to lower percentage of faulty items and faster response to queries, among other things.

TMK plants have embarked on 270 improvement projects (Lean Six Sigma and 5S) since the start of the year; a half of these have already been completed by now, producing over 280m RUR in savings.

The primary focus of the second half of the year in terms of cost-cutting and effective resource management is on commissioning of new equipment that has been invested in recently and further development of promising pipe-rolling technologies. A special product development strategy, based on customer feedback, will be introduced for every product group and every plant by the end of the year. The goal is to make sure TMK plants produce competitive, popular, and highly profitable new-generation goods.