“CLIMBING THE LADDER OF SUCCESS”: YOU CAN BE IMPECCABLE, BUT IF YOU ARE NOT A TEAM PLAYER – THE STORY OF SUCCESS IS UNTELLABLE – MAJA ILIEVSKA, MANAGER OF SOFT DRINKS QUALITY IN PIVARA SKOPJE

Their personal qualities brought them great professional success. Today, they are members of management teams and lead the most successful companies in the country. These are the stories of our successful people that we will publish in the column “Climbing the ladder of success”. Fakulteti.mk and the Educational Center of Pivara Skopje through the training Skills for Success show you the path to the stars

“Be careful what you wish for, it may come true”. This sentence titillates through the story of Maja Ilievska, quality assurance manager in the soft drinks department at Pivara Skopje. With a broad smile, she describes herself as “Pivarec” – a word that indicates family, collective affiliation and dedication. Her mission is making genuine Pivarci from the youth ranks of the company.

Discipline and teamwork are crucial for success, and her team reached the peak twice; once in 2008 and once again in 2012 when the most famous non-alcoholic beverage Coca-Cola produced by Pivara Skopje was named the best in the world. What does that mean? It means to be one hundred percent successful in every production segment, 365 days a year.

Immediate, open, sharp, but sincere, with a good sense of humor, Maja is an example that with good organization and hard work everyone can succeed. Mother of Dimitar, Mihail and the youngest Teodora, wife of high school sweetheart Dragan from her native Kumanovo, she recalls jokingly:

– I wanted three children, perhaps because I was alone and I always wanted children to play with. At home it was always quiet, but now it is dynamic. Everything is possible with a good “business plan”. There is no obstacle that cannot be overcome.

Everything started with her microbiology graduation paper

She graduated from the high school in Kumanovo and enrolled at the Institute of Biology at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Skopje. She is a daughter of two doctors in Kumanovo. Her mother was not in favor of her enrolling to medicine.

– She used to say: “There are enough shocks in a person’s life. You do not need to stress out and empathize with the fate of other people”. A few years later it was the first lesson I learned in Pivara Skopje. Since I am an emotional person, I have learned to control my emotions. I still had to overcome the expression on my face – I failed to master it with flying colors. Everything can be seen on my face since the early morning – she says.

She had always been drawn to natural sciences. Her boyfriend (now husband) studied at the Faculty of Economics and persuaded her to study together.

– I could never study it. I became an engineer in biology. I attended the fourth year and graduated immediately afterwards. We are often joking about this: “Oh, she finished a course, not a faculty. Maybe it was a provocation because Dragan graduated immediately after attending fourth year. I told myself – if he can do it, I can too. Discipline has always been our trait – we know what we will do for the weekend, from Friday to Sunday. That’s how we function with our closest ones too. When we go on a summer holiday, everything is arranged, we have a “business plan” which is strictly respected in advance – Maja says laughingly.

Her story of Pivara Skopje is related to her graduation paper in microbiology, the love of this branch and the lectures of professor Dzoko Kungulovski. At that time, the faculty did not offer many opportunities for internships or work outside the institutional framework. Kungulovski repeatedly told the students about successful companies in Macedonia.

– I am preparing you for the future with microbiology… Tomorrow, Pivara Skopje will seek young people to get employed… That was how he was motivating us. I have always been very committed and I had great ambitions – to fight for something, to be at the top. You have heard the proverb – Be careful what you wish for, it may come true. At the end of 2002, Pivara Skopje needed several employees from different vocations. We were a group of fifteen-or-so colleagues from different faculties – technologists, engineers, from PMF, electrical engineers. The faculty recommended us – Ilievska says.

“Skopsko and everything is possible”

Working in a factory is a man’s job, says Maja. That does not mean that a woman cannot deal with the process. The perception of working in a factory is: order, work and discipline, and that is her motto. There must be discipline. That is why everyone has to fit into the process that waits for no one.

– We work together, for his majesty – the buyer. The main goal of the factory is to deliver superior quality, to meet the demands of buyers, all at the appropriate time. In the meantime, everything happens. Balancing is necessary. When we talk about quality, here it is implied in every segment of the operation. Factory means a chain system. Here a successful individual does not finish the job. You can be impeccable, but if you are not a team player, you can forget about the success story. This is like running a relay race. The commitment of all employees is enormous. I’m free to call myself Pivarec, because I feel as one. Often we say the slogan “Skopsko and everything is possible” to each other. If we are in unison and agree on everything, everything is possible – Ilievska is adamant.

She entered Pivara Skopje as a microbiologist in the beer department. She was very nervous about the great responsibility.

– A successful company hired me; let alone in the beer department where everyone was male and all of them my father’s generation! As a girl who has just graduated from college to prove to these people, to create authority, to make her word credible?! How can I make sure that operators or other associates listen to me when making decisions? I’m talking about old bones fabric, each of them an expert in their field with 30 years of work experience, and I’m under 25? Today these people are my greatest friends. Regardless of the different age, we have great mutual respect.

Second challenge – yeast multiplication. Approximately at the same time when their first son Dimitar was born.

– I see the baby at home – it’s good. We have multiplied the yeast; the first thing at work – right to the plant to see if it grows, if it has sprouted…  – says Maja.

At this time she was responsible for all analyses, results, interpretation of each Petri dish, what should be agreed as a preventative and what as the next activity, monitoring trends and the whole process through its microbiological image.

– Engineers’ work is to run the process, not vice versa. Today, production is very different. A new, fully-automated brewing plant was opened. This is also how a person is gradually developing. New rules and requirements, new team… One thing is certain, Pivara Skopje always tries to have top equipment, invests in itself and is constantly the market leader – explains Ilievska.

Passion for standards

Next, she was transferred from the beer department to the supervisor position in the non-alcoholic beverages laboratory. This was a totally new environment. Although it is within Pivara Skopje, these are two separate factories that have different requirements from corporations. As a person who always wanted to answer the questions, Maja faced a new situation.

– I knew everything about beer, but soft drinks… hmm, let me check. The advantage is that Pivara Skopje is part of two huge corporations – Coca-Cola HBC and HEINEKEN, from which you can really learn a lot, because they are always among the first. We have the opportunity to use the best of both. And how much we want to invest ourselves – depends on us. I often say that there is one master degree in Pivara Skopje every year. There is always something new, one needs to read, and this is how you are upgrading and acquiring new knowledge – she says.

Over the years, she found a major challenge in standards and their implementation in Pivara Skopje. Within her job description, she was assigned to maintain the existing and implement new ISO standards. It was a trigger for her passion – to be the first in the introduction of the highest standards in the world. They implemented the ISO 22000 Food Safety Standard and they were the first to be certified even at a time when, at the state level, just the elementary elements of HACCP were discussed.

– We were guided by Heineken standards at the time. We did a comparison of Heineken’s and Coca-Cola’s requirements, and we built our system that proved to be very successful. We work on the standards with my colleague, and she is my right hand. We have a common anecdote – she started working in Pivara Skopje on the day I was born. And when we met here, our joint experience began – to work on standards, something that really fulfills me. To implement and maintain them. Each next step is even more challenging. In 2016 we were the first in Coca-Cola Hellenic to be certified with the new versions of ISO 9001:2015 quality standards and ISO 14001:2015 environmental standards, then we were certified with ISO 50001:2011 for energy efficiency, next year we introduced the EWS Water Resources Management System… and we continue – says Ilievska.

Success never comes from individuals

She is part of the team that won the Best Coca-Cola Award in the world in 2008 and 2012. Ilievska explains that the company has established it as a system. Samples are taken directly from the market, from all producing countries, and are analyzed by the same principle in the same laboratory.

– We call it Product Quality Excellence. In those years, of all countries in the world, we had a score of 100% in all months, from all the sites from which our product was sampled. Everything was in line with the rules and standards we set up – Ilievska says.

The principle is the same – we always use the highest-quality raw materials from suppliers from different countries, which must have previously been approved by The Coca-Cola Company. Pivara Skopje has Macedonian suppliers, suppliers from Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and many other countries. And they all meet the same standards. There are eight people working in the non-alcoholic beverages lab, which is in a “strategic” position between the syrup preparation section and final products. This is not a coincidence because the whole process can be monitored most effectively.

– The secret is in the team. Success never comes from individuals or formulas. We all work in the same way. All Coca-Cola plants operate under the same set of rules. But how you implement them, how much you adhere to them, how you play the game – depends on you. Our biggest advantage is a very dedicated and experienced team of real Pivarci. In experience I see our percentage advantage over teams from other countries, where there is a greater fluctuation of people in the team. Our team is stable, with a lot of inherent experience. If you complement it with a youthful spirit and élan that will give a different perspective on the world, with the enthusiasm and absolute experience that the older colleagues have – you get the secret of success. Our people are that important; so we should pay that much tribute to their undeniable commitment. We literally function as a family. We do everything together – we celebrate birthdays of all children and grandchildren. And we communicate daily very, very openly – says Maja.

Once a Pivarec, forever a Pivarec

She is a member of IMCR (Incident Management and Crisis Resolution) at Pivara Skopje. This team analyzes risks and opportunities; it is binding and, as Maja says, “it must absolutely work”. She explains that every employee is a risk manager on a daily basis, starting with an operator who needs to decide at the moment whether the production line should be stopped because there is a cause that can introduce a problem in quality.

The knowledge you get in the school bench and in real life is very different. I always tell the younger ones – be proactive, ask questions constantly, every question is a new challenge from another perspective. The view is broadening and we grow together this way – says Ilievska.

She is adamant that Pivara Skopje does not leave you in a comfortable zone, in any job position. Being a quality assurance manager in soft drinks is a huge responsibility.

– People expect three times more from us than from others. We are selling a brand and we are expected to deliver only the best. If I decided to buy a brand, I expect a lot from the brand. The same expectations apply to us. And that’s very normal. That’s why we have three times more responsibility, each in his or her segment of operation. We are the cover face of Pivara Skopje, Coca-Cola and Heineken. And in that way we have to behave in every segment of our operations. Only then will we achieve the goal – a satisfied buyer. Therefore, discipline is inevitable. We must adhere to the set rules and method of operation. Not because the boss said so, but for the buyer’s sake – says Maja.

One of the most important segments of the work is the transfer of experience, which is the future of any company. Ilievska says that every manager is as successful as the team is, if it created successful heirs.

– The greatness of a leader is seen through the knowledge he or she conveys. How much the student will exceed him or her. To create a group of people who will truly respect each other. If you ask me about the professional satisfaction, we return to the beginning: “Be careful what you wish for, it may come true”. My wish as a student came true. The bond with the company is great. Once, one of the directors said: “You can get out Pivara, but Pivara cannot get out of you”. And it is true. To live the genuine Pivarec moment. I would like to share this with the team’s younger members – to make them genuine Pivarci. Expertise can be achieved. To be a genuine Pivarec you should also feel it – says Maja.