In a dynamic market environment, continuous improvement is the key to success. With our lean project, we at BUTTING in Knesebeck have taken a decisive step towards optimising processes, using resources more efficiently and offering our customers even better service. Lean stands for more than just lean processes - it means a new way of thinking that reduces waste, increases quality and promotes a culture of continuous improvement. In this interview, Jörn Kubiak, Head of the Pipe Technology business unit at the Knesebeck site, provides insights into his "lean journey".
Perspectives (P): You and your team initiated a lean project in the production centre in the middle of last year. Let's talk about your motivations, measures and successes. Why did you start the project and what do you expect to gain from it?
Jörn Kubiak (JK): Ultimately, this project should help us to maintain our competitiveness in the market for housings and cylinders. To put it more simply: We want to ensure that we are economically successful in the future.
P: Do you see BUTTING's position in the market as being jeopardised?
JK: Yes, absolutely. Just look at the current mood in the German economy. Many companies are complaining about rising costs. We can't ignore that. At the same time, China is flooding the world with cheap and ever better products. America has imposed high tariffs on European steel products, making our products 25% more expensive in the USA. To prepare ourselves for these stormy times, we urgently need to weatherproof the BUTTING ship.
P: How can the lean project help you with this?
JK: If we want to continue to produce successfully in Germany, the only answer is to do so as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. "Lean management" is the key tool for this.
P: Can you briefly explain what the term "lean" means?
JK: The English word "lean" translates as "lean". To produce lean means to produce free of any "waste". It's important to me that we don't take the term "waste" personally. Nobody wastes resources on purpose, but we as a BUTTING system do.
To understand the depth of the principle, we need to realise what "waste" is. A simple indicator of waste is to ask ourselves what our customers are willing to pay for. These activities are called value-adding activities. The many other things we do, e.g. unnecessary transport and movements, holding stock, waiting times at machines, are called non-value-adding activities and, in lean language, "waste".
An example: A customer who buys housings from the production centre would understand that we buy a coil, take it to the coil line, produce the tube there, then take the tubes to the turning and milling machine and process them, then pickle, pack and load them. He would certainly understand that we need some time to load the order, issue an invoice and carry out a few other tasks.
P: But isn't that exactly how we work?
JK: At first glance, yes. At second glance, no. If we take a close look at our processes, we find waste almost everywhere. Sometimes big, sometimes tiny. All in all, this costs us a lot of productivity and therefore money. Instead of taking semi-finished products directly to the next work step and processing them, we buffer material, hold stocks and have to "touch" and transport the parts several times. This results in scratches, the material becomes dirty and has to be cleaned again. Waiting and idle times extend our throughput times and tie up capital unnecessarily. Search times for materials and tools are the order of the day. Machines are idle because no material, pallets or industrial trucks are available. Machine operators take materials to the next workstation themselves or organise consumables themselves.
During this time, the machines should actually be running. We still have a lot of potential when it comes to organising workstations and reducing travel times. We also find "waste" in administrative processes.
P: What specific changes have you made in the production centre?
JK: First of all, we are not just concentrating on the production centre, but rather on optimising the entire process chain for manufacturing enclosures. This means: from the loading of customer orders to the delivery of components to our customers.
We have set ourselves the goal of radically reducing the lead time for all the work steps required to manufacture an enclosure to five working days, provided the insert tube is available.
Delivery time promise
This helps us to compete, as we can give our customers a clear delivery time promise.
At the same time, we put ourselves under "time pressure". This desire to become radically faster has led us to discover the "waste". There is simply no time for it.
The short lead time has led to major changes, e.g. when it comes to order utilisation or production planning in SAP. We now only have half a day for this. To achieve this, we have eliminated unnecessary SAP entries and streamlined the input process. Thanks to the significantly shorter delivery time, we no longer manufacture housings based on inaccurate forecast and planning
data from our existing customers, but
only produce what the customer orders. This changeover saves us time in commercial order processing and production planning and control. At the same time, we can reduce our stocks of housings and primary materials.
Series and project business decoupled
We have also significantly reduced throughput times in the moulded part pickling and grinding shop. As our customers demand the housings very continuously and evenly, we were able to reserve an approximate weekly capacity for our products in both areas. The moulded part pickling department has even set up its own process circuit for the production centre products with its own pickling tank and employees. In addition, pickling tanks were purchased and a handling device was built to reduce "waste" when handling the parts. A big thank you at this point to both teams.
In the production centre, we are in the process of organising work differently.
Until now, employees have organised consumables and packaging materials themselves, for example, or carried out ancillary activities in such a way that the machine was partially idle during this time. In future, we will use a "classic lean principle", namely the consistent separation of machine operation and supply activities.
Supermarket
Specifically, we have created the function of an operational production controller. The production controller is a kind of "pulse generator" that supplies all machines with material and transfers semi-finished products to the next workstation or to the transfer area for central logistics. It supplies the workstations with consumables and packaging materials and helps to set up some of the machines. We have already successfully trialled the concept and are currently in the process of implementing it.
At the same time, we are reorganising workstations, reducing travel times and have set up a supermarket for packaging materials, which is now filled by the central logistics department. This will relieve the burden on the team leaders working shifts, who will have to focus more on the flow of materials and efficient work in production.
P: Can you give us an outlook for the future?
JK: We have clearly defined the basic roadmap; now we have to implement it with many small steps and discipline. We will certainly come up with further measures to combat waste. "Lean management is a journey and therefore never finished.
