Stara has been extending its physical structure, and consequently, the manufacturing capacity since its door was open 61 years ago. The headquarters is in the town of Não Me-Toque, the state of the Rio Grande do Sul. The total company area is 142 ha with 110,046 m² of constructed area. The branch in Carazinho has an area of around 8,000m² with more than 350 employees. The branch area in Santa Rosa city, on the other hand, is 7,000 m² with 260 employees.

We started the sequence “Getting to know the Stara factory” to show how our units and departments work. We want to present our structure to everyone who helps us to seek constant evolution. Let’s start with the Human Resources, Purchasing and Engineering Departments.

HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENT

The Human Resources Department (HR) manages people. At Stara, the department provides even more. It invests in the qualification, well-being and satisfaction of employees. A project that has placed Stara among the best companies to work for, according to Great Place to Work.

There are 30 employees working in the department, the three branches included. The department is responsible for more than 3500 employees, which are divided into two management structures: People Management and Personnel Department. People Management involves recruitment and selection, endomarketing, training and development, position and salary, benefits and performance appraisal. The Personnel Department deals with legal issues such as employee hiring and attendance access control.

It is important to highlight the investment in training and resources for staff qualification who give their best for Stara. The HR manages this qualification process, as much for internal training as for external one. Stara is concerned with its staff professional evolution and seeks to qualify the team even more. For example, there is the “Academia Stara”, a project that aims to train and prepare the employees to develop their talent inside the company.

Stara is also concerned about the ones that haven’t become its employee yet. “Everyone who contacts Stara is answered. We receive plenty of resumes every day. We are glad, so we must answer who wants to contact us”, says the HR manager, Volmir Amann. The selection process for hiring has several steps. In addition to being interviewed by a psychologist and by the department managers, there are exams to evaluate the technical capacity of the applicant. It is all part of a process to keep the excellence of Stara products and services.

Like all the other departments, HR is very important for the company functioning and staff organization. Managing a high number of employees is no easy job, but it has been performed safely and with reliability by everyone over the years. Stara believes that its most important asset is the people and that valuing its activities increases the commitment and follows the Constant Evolution philosophy.

 

ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

The Engineering Department searches, improves and develop new products to provide more innovative solutions for customers and keep the company strong in the national and international market.

The department has 181 employees. It is divided into Product Engineering and Experimental Engineering. Product Engineering is directly connected to competitor analyses, market scenarios, new trends, and studies conducted with other areas to provide improvement and solutions for crop field demands.

The director of Stara Research and Development, Cristiano Buss, explains that the department is constantly searching for innovations: “The main objective of the Engineering Department is to look to the future, search new technologies, create new trends along with other departments to keep the company growing and evolving.”

For Stara, the farmer opinion is crucial and is part of our engineering process that follows the customer and their workers. Our Engineering Department welcomes farmer suggestions and improvements to develop new products. Cristiano highlights that: “The best engineer is the farmer who is there, in the crop field. They are the ones who use our products and see what the demands are. Our role is to translate it into smart solutions.”

Experimental Engineering is responsible for the prototypes and testing the machine in the development process. Through this process, some prototypes and upgrades are performed until the machine can be released to be traded.

Being aware of what is being developed and being prepared to provide the farmers with what they are looking for and with smart solutions keeps Stara competing and standing out in the market.

 

PURCHASING DEPARTMENT

Stara has been evolving in all processes, one of them, being the relationship with suppliers. In addition to having contact with customers, investors and partners, the company is concerned with the relationship with suppliers. It is a method to keep the factory functioning in full swing and optimize the processes to keep the company competitive.

The Stara Purchasing Department has 23 employees. The team is divided into the following sectors: Planning, Material Programming and Control, Development, Purchasing for the Parts Unit and Indirect Purchasing.

The material purchasing demand comes from the factory or new projects. The MRP project carries out an analysis to control the number of components required to manufacture the machines for a determined period. These analyses are interpreted by the Planning team.

Then, analysis of the supplier’s capacity and factory capacity is carried out by the Production Planning and Control.

All Stara machine components go through an evaluation process until the suppliers are chosen. This evaluation is performed by a team specially prepared for it, which evaluates characteristics such as quality, price, manufacturing capacity, and deadline.

Adrivânio Dal Vesco, Purchasing Department manager, highlights the importance of selecting the perfect supplier. “Purchasing the best quality material, greatest cost-benefit and shortest delivery time are some essential points for the final product to have conditions to compete in the market”, he points out.

In the past months, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the department has been having difficulties finding plenty of materials. The team has been making efforts to keep the factory supplied and working. Stara stands out by the quality of machine components and market competitiveness. It is also due to the internal process improvements carried out by the Purchasing Department and other departments involved to make the company even more recognized.