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Achtergrond
No more worries about the syncs
Reading time: 4 minutes
Around 2013, ASML ran into a problem familiar to many fast-growing high-tech companies. With its technology growing increasingly complex, its software engineers were fully focused on product development while spending less time on the process behind it all. But outsourcing process support was unsatisfactory – until ASML’s Stefan de Hoog and Ad van Dongen of ICT Group tried a new approach. Today, a team of formerly jobless people now trained as ‘sync services’ specialists at ICT support ASML’s software engineers in getting things done.
ASML is the world’s leading manufacturer of chip-making equipment. ‘Together with our customers, suppliers and partners we constantly push technology forward,’ says Stefan de Hoog, senior manager for business change initiatives and business governance at ASML’s Presidents’ Office. ‘Our software developers have to be creative, focused, wired to always stay ahead of the game. In a fast-paced environment like this, it’s a challenge to systematically commit the time and energy for things like a user manual for a new piece of software.’
When De Hoog joined ASML in 2013, he felt the administrative processes surrounding the more innovative work – which ASML calls ‘syncs’ – were not running smoothly. ‘One key issue was the process of getting new solutions integrated into the Qualified Baseline, or QBL. That means the changes resulting from new solutions will be systematically implemented in everything that follows. Working with Ad van Dongen of ICT, I started to think of ways to improve that process, capitalizing on the best of ASML and its supply chain.’
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