How Hydro are working smarter, faster and more environmentally friendly with RamBase QMS
With production sites across several continents and tens of thousands of employees, there's a lot to coordinate. Data, procedures, expertise, and other business-critical documentation are in constant circulation. Hydro uses RamBase QMS to keep everything organized with solid, reliable workflows.
Facts
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Company size
Industry
Solution
Hydro's landscape
Manufacturing under pressure
Metal manufacturers today are being squeezed from every direction: rising cost scrutiny, tighter quality expectations, stricter compliance, and pressure to boost productivity without adding complexity. The challenge isn't producing more, it's producing more consistently.
The hidden cost of variation
Inconsistent shift practices, inaccessible work instructions, training records buried in spreadsheets, and corrective actions that don't stick. These gaps quietly add up to scrap, rework, downtime, complaints, and audit pressure across the industry.
Proving control, not just quality
Customers in sectors like automotive, aerospace, defence, and energy don't just want a quality product anymore. They want evidence of control: clear standards, trained people, and traceable processes. Manual, disconnected systems and text-only procedures make that evidence hard to produce and even harder to maintain at scale.
What Hydro achieves with RamBase QMS
"Working smarter, faster, and more environmentally friendly"
That's how Kjellbjørn Fossheim, Business System Manager at Hydro, describes the shift with RamBase QMS. A simple, intuitive user experience turned the system into a tool for continuous improvement rather than a compliance burden, giving Hydro value for the time and effort invested.
40–50% less time spent on shop-floor checks
Since introducing the SOP-WOC (Walk, Observe, Communicate) functionality, preliminary estimates suggest Hydro has cut time consumption on structured observations by 40–50%. It also reduces rework and avoids the misunderstandings that come from delayed or indirect reporting, while giving operators a direct channel to suggest improvements on the spot.
A connected, ownership-driven knowledge hub
RamBase QMS now works as the knowledge hub connecting expertise across Hydro's plants: the place where instructions, procedures, and training all live. Because the system is low-complexity, the people who do the work can create and maintain their own procedures, strengthening ownership. Digital quizzes and procedure sign-offs confirm employees have the training their role requires, documents move easily between locations, and management gets a transparent, scalable standard across every factory, nearly 20 years into the partnership.
At Hydro, continuous improvement is more than a philosophy—it's a global necessity. With factories across continents, the ability to learn from each other and improve processes in real-time is critical. But how do you bridge those distances and turn everyday work into structured learning? That’s where the SOP-WOC tool comes in—a powerful functionality within RamBase Quality Management System that’s helping Hydro do just that.

WOC (Walk, Observe, Communicate) is inspired by the Japanese Gemba walk concept—where leaders go to the "real place" to see and understand work processes first-hand. RamBase has taken this principle and built it into a digital functionality that fits seamlessly into the QMS platform.
"With RamBase QMS, we’re working smarter, faster, and more environmentally friendly. A simple and intuitive user experience makes the system a tool for continuous improvement, and gives us value for the time and effort we invest.”
Business System Manager, Hydro
Manufacturing Under Pressure: Reducing Cost, Variation, Defects & Operational Instability
In today’s high-pressure manufacturing environment, reducing cost without compromising quality is a growing challenge.
In this Alfed webinar, Hydro shares how they are working to stabilise operations and reduce variation across their manufacturing processes. Through practical experience, they will highlight what it takes to move away from reactive firefighting and toward more controlled, predictable production.
The session will cover how Hydro is:
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Reducing costs and variation through standardised ways of working
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Detecting issues earlier through better visibility
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Strengthening follow-up and accountability to prevent recurrence
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