Joyce on quality, safety, and her #FavoriteMoments

Joyce F. has been part of our team at Villares Metals S.A. in Brazil since 2008. There we manufacture a wide range of products, including steels for medical implants, tools, and the aerospace industry. The company is headquartered in Sumaré, about 100 kilometers northwest of São Paulo. In addition to its production facility there, the company also operates four service centers throughout the country. On top of selling and shipping premium steel grades, we can also run additional finishing processes here, such as heat treatment.

Joyce has taken an active role in shaping her profession over the past few years. As an executive assistant, she used to book business trips, for example—one of several tasks that modern software solutions now simplify. She still performs administrative tasks, which now account for about 20% of her workload. Step by step, Joyce has proactively developed a wide range of skills, such as in the area of quality assurance, and has continuously pursued further training. Today, she is the quality responsible at the center and performs audits on other teams.

Joyce is a certified auditor for various standards:

• ISO 9001, the benchmark for quality management systems,
• AS9100, key in the aerospace sector,
• ISO 13485, essential in the medical device industry, and
• IATF 16949, applicable in the automotive sector.

She normally audits all the processes in the steel production chain including administrative fields such as purchasing, supplier management, human resources, etc. The processes in her own department in sales, distribution and added services are internally audited by other certified colleagues.

Through their internal audits potential quality issues can be identified and resolved even before external audits take place—this typically involves ensuring compliance with formal regulations. Crucially, success in external audits within our specialized segments forms the foundation for successful, long-term customer relationships.

Part of Joyce’s day-to-day work in quality management involves supporting our customers through direct conversation and listening closely: How satisfied are they? What improvements make sense? Joyce calculates quality metrics, reviews customer complaints, and improves processes to increase customer satisfaction. In addition, she organizes and oversees an extensive annual customer survey—from the contact list and service provider offerings all the way through to the analysis.

As a producer of specialty steels, Villares Metals treats workplace safety as its top priority—both through process improvements in production and through ongoing awareness campaigns. Within our group of companies, Villares Metals has become a leader in safety and is certified to the ISO 45001 standard. And Joyce plays a key role in this, making smart choices. Of course, she applies this same mindset in her personal life as well.

Traveling is one of Joyce’s passions. And whenever she flies, she always thinks about that, in most cases, the steel for the aircraft landing gear was produced at “her” company. She regularly enjoys taking trips with her family and is always on the lookout for more wonderful places to visit. She consciously cherishes her children’s development as #FavoriteMoments.

Thanks to her many years at Villares Metals, she can look back on numerous special moments—for example, successfully managing the expansion of the Service Center’s administrative building right in the middle of the pandemic. And Joyce shares one more #FavoriteMoment with us: being part of our campaign video and taking her first business trip to our headquarters in Austria for it.