Who am I?
I was born and raised in Bosnia, where I went to school and graduated in Law. With limited job opportunities in my home town, I decided to move to Sweden and settle in Norrköping. This was at the beginning of 2020, when my journey to a new and better life began. I recently moved again, this time a little closer to Linköping and my partner. When I’m not working, I enjoy travelling and spending time with family and friends.
I joined Holmen Paper as a production planner in May 2022. As a lawyer, this was something completely new for me, but I was curious and am happy and grateful that I got the position. Today I’m responsible for planning on two of Holmen Paper’s four paper machines, PM 11 and PM 53.
My workplace
Holmen Paper has two paper mills, one in Hallstavik and one in Braviken, with four paper machines producing paper 24/7. The production planning team is part of the sales and marketing organisation and we’re based in central Norrköping. We’re a small team of three people, two production planners and our manager. We’re a structured and flexible team, which is important in this position, as we’re constantly facing new challenges. The market changes frequently, and we have to keep up.
A working day
Every day at the office is different and that’s why it’s so great, because you never know what’s going to happen that day. Since I moved to Linköping, I travel to work by train every morning and my routine is that the day can’t start without a caramel latte to help me wake up. While drinking my coffee, I switch on my computer and check how things went the day before and overnight in production.
Our machines are producing all the time, although we have maintenance shutdowns every four to five weeks, when it takes a few hours to clean and fix everything. The system allows us to check whether we had any unplanned stoppages or breakdowns. So there is always a brief check-in with the mill in the morning. After that, I start my work for the day. I open my mailbox and our main software program Cups, where I have production blocks and can plan each order. We plan two months of production at a time. My role is quite independent, but as a team we have our joint meetings every Monday and Thursday, where we go through the booking situation on the machines and discuss how the week has gone and how we can help each other if necessary.
The most important part of my job is to plan all the orders in advance, allocate them in the right blocks, comply with our processes and targets and, last but not least, provide the best support and service to my colleagues from Customer Care and Logistics. To get the best results, everyone has to work towards the same goal, and I’m very happy that we work so well together as colleagues.
As production planners, we have many challenges, such as when we have a machine breakdown followed by delays, or when we receive last-minute orders for a very important customer and we have no capacity left. These are just a few examples, but there’s so much more to production planning. The best feeling for me, and the one that motivates me every day, is going home knowing that everything has been sorted out with no loose ends.
Why Holmen?
In 2018, when I came to Norrköping as a tourist to visit my sister, I took a picture in front of the Holmen Paper building without knowing anything about the company. For me at that moment it was just a lovely place for photos, but then I got to know a bit more about the company. Now, several years later, I work in that building and I think it was kind of “meant to be”. I feel proud to work in a company that everyone knows about.
The most important way to be my best self is to have friendly colleagues, a positive working environment and an employer that cares about its employees and can offer development and improvement. I have all that and much more at Holmen. Also, coming from a completely different country and culture and being accepted and appreciated as a colleague means a lot and says so much about the company.
Conclusion
So that’s it for today. Thank you so much for spending some of your time with me and reading this week’s blog. I hope you’re taking away more information about me and my role. All the best, and maybe we’ll meet one day. 😊