Team leader in technical documentation/product compliance, FLT
SPOTLIGHT ON DIANA STEPHAN

Profile

Diana Stephan

At FIBRO from 1987 to 2011

At FLT since 2012

My tasks
Creating legally compliant instructions and documentation for customers worldwide.


You have worked for the company for a really long time. Can you describe your career to us?

 

I’ve been with the company for 33 years. I started my apprenticeship as a technical draughtsperson at FIBRO GmbH, in the field of automation. After my vocational training, I worked in design and then switched to FIBRO GSA when the companies merged in 2007. I’ve worked for FLT since 2011. I’ve been able to develop a great deal professionally thanks to the in-house training programmes and have completed courses to become a product compliance manager and a CE officer, for example.

 

 

What do you do in the technical documentation department and as compliance manager?


We compile all types of instructions which, most importantly, need to be legally compliant. For this, we need to examine the order and scrutinise the customer specifications and everything that the customer wants from us. We hold customer meetings on-site, where we clarify the scope and type of documentation, whether it’s an area covered by the CE marking, whether the CE conformity process needs to be carried out or whether it’s just small devices, free-issue parts, etc. We then prepare the tender. To do this, we need to exchange information with all of the affected departments in the company. In addition, we have to take the legal requirements for different countries into account – for our department, these are the USA, China, the EU and Canada. Last but not least, we advise other companies in the LÄPPLE Group on compliance.

 

Industry 4.0 and digitisation are all the rage at the moment. How are FLT and the LÄPPLE Group confronting these new challenges? And more specifically, how has your day-to-day documentation work changed?

 

To stay up to date from a technical point of view, we do need to address digitisation and Industry 4.0. We are currently setting up a content management system so that we can continue to meet new requirements in the future. We also need to constantly get to grips with new technologies and check whether they are or could be important to our department. We have recently been looking at some data glasses to see whether they could have a use in documentation or maintenance – the same goes for QR codes. For example, maintenance technicians could use these to read off information from the machines directly on-site via a smartphone or tablet, meaning they could work more efficiently.

 

 

You are now at FLT. How much contact do you have with other companies in the LÄPPLE Group?

 

We work together with other areas of the LÄPPLE Group, such as FIBRO GmbH in Weinsberg with its rotary indexing tables and the Hassmersheim site with its standard parts. We give them advice on product compliance and also have links to LÄPPLE, as we provide systems for their projects. We create the documentation, sort out the CE marking, etc. So I collaborate with other companies within the LÄPPLE Group a lot.

We are also setting up a translation management system for FLT and FIBRO. LÄPPLE will also be able to benefit from this – we will have everything in one place, covering everyone. For product compliance, we also want to centralise everything in a terminology database so that the same terminology is used consistently across the company. This will help us to save money and work efficiently.


What do you like about the LÄPPLE Group?

 

I like the fact that everything is constantly evolving, both the company as a whole and its products. I also appreciate the reliability of the products and the sense of togetherness within the group. The LÄPPLE Group also offers plenty of opportunities for education and training – I’ve been lucky enough to experience this myself. Health management is a major focus as well. You can tell that each and every employee is important to LÄPPLE. That is why I am proud to be part of this company.