Cultural change is the basis for our company’s success
Leadership and Organizational Development
Suzano combines operational excellence with the ability to harness external factors for sustainable growth.
By leveraging Operational Excellence, Suzano achieved record-breaking revenue and profitability, despite challenges such as lower pulp prices in 2023. Suzano‘s focus on leadership and continuous learning reflects its ability to turn challenges into opportunities, ensuring a promising future for both the company and its communities.
Operational excellence and strategic investments ensure sustainable growth
Suzano, the world‘s largest pulp manufacturer and a key player in Latin America‘s paper industry, has seamlessly integrated operational excellence with effective utilization of external factors, ensuring enduring success over the years. The company currently employs over 49,000 people across 13 factories in Brazil, along with 1 joint operation (Veracel) and 1 joint venture (Woodspin), supported by ten international offices. Founded in 1924, Suzano has achieved unprecedented results in the last two years, setting new records in revenue and profitability. Despite challenging conditions in 2023, including lower average pulp prices and its highest annual spending, Suzano maintained strong cash flow, keeping net debt at healthy levels. In an exclusive interview with staufen magazine, Claudinei Matos, Director of Consumer Goods Industrial Operations at Suzano, discussed the company‘s challenges and the positive impacts of investments in leadership and process standardization. Currently, most of Suzano’s factories already have daily management implemented, supported by Staufen, and leadership tasks are already integrated into the routine and management model throughout the company.
Challenges and Growth Strategies
With a century of operations, Suzano has encountered and continues to face significant challenges in achieving strategic objectives, as explained by Claudinei Matos. “Like other Brazilian companies experiencing growth, we aim to uphold operational standards within a structured growth strategy, prioritizing product quality and environmental stewardship,” says Matos. He adds, “This requires widespread engagement, driven by a profound shift in leadership approach, resulting in a cultural transformation at Suzano and notable gains in productivity, quality, cost efficiency, and delivery.”
Implementing Methodologies Across Diverse Business Lines
Suzano’s industrial operations include tissue paper units, printing and writing paper, pulp operations and a vast forestry area, which makes the standardization of methodologies a complex challenge. According to Matos, Suzano‘s dedicated Operational Excellence team respects the unique requirements of each business line. “Implementing operational excellence strategies in consumer goods differs significantly from forestry operations. While principles of engagement and certain tools remain consistent, they are adapted to suit the specific needs of each business,” clarifies the director.
As leaders at Suzano, we not only create and share values, but also inspire through our actions. Leadership promotes discipline, integration and motivation. It drives cultural change, which forms the basis for the company’s success.
Claudinei Matos Director of Consumer Goods Industrial Operations, Suzano
The Importance of Leadership
Suzano‘s investment in implementing daily management routines has already yielded positive outcomes. “With support from Staufen, we‘ve introduced a highly practical and powerful daily management model that nurtures leadership and engages teams. Operational boards facilitate swift, focused discussions with teams, reviewing daily outcomes, pinpointing key deviations, and monitoring containment and improvement actions. Valuing team input strengthens our processes, enabling us to cultivate a new generation of Suzano leaders committed to delivering results and driving growth,” explains Matos.
Claudinei underscores the pivotal role of leadership in standardizing best practices across Suzano‘s operations. He emphasizes that leadership must lead by example: “As Suzano‘s leaders, we not only create and share value but also inspire through actions. Leadership fosters discipline, integration, and motivation, driving the cultural shift that underpins business success.”
Suzano places a high value on continuous learning, drawing insights from other industries to innovate and implement effective solutions. “We remain vigilant of developments in other plants, perpetually learning to introduce fresh problem-solving methods and solutions within our organization. Suzano‘s century-long legacy demonstrates that innovation and excellence in management can transform challenges into opportunities, securing a promising future for the company and the communities it serves,” concludes Suzano‘s Director of Consumer Goods Industrial Operations.
About Suzano
With over 49,000 employees across 13 Brazilian factories and international operations, Suzano is actually the largest pulp manufacturer in the world, one of the largest paper producers in Latin America and the leader in the toilet paper segment in Brazil.
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