Originally founded as an electronics shop, the dosing technology specialist Saier has long produced its products more like a manufacturer. To exploit the full potential of a new production facility and an automated high-rack storage system, this family-managed company underwent a lean transformation with the help of Staufen AG.
SUCCESS STORY
The Right Dose of Lean
Despite the new building and the introduction of an ERP system, production at Saier was still more like manufacturing. There were no standardized work systems that were attuned to the production flow, and assembly processes were subdivided into small, individual steps with large lot sizes.
That’s why Saier and Staufen started a lighthouse project in 2019. Core goal: Reduction of lead times.
We have changed our corporate culture for the long term and reoriented it. The whole team is now more motivated looking into the future.
Michael Saier
Managing Director, Saier
A product with 250 variants was selected and analyzed from the points of view lead time, value creation, and waste. The assembly times could be improved significantly with a modified work system. Encouraged by the experiences and results from the lighthouse project, Saier decided to roll out the optimizations all across its production.
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Strategy Excellence
The question that currently needs to be asked is why strategy is now gaining renewed attention among many companies. In our opinion, this can be attributed to two developments: First, over the past few years, external influences such as political decisions or shorter technology cycles on companies and their market environment have increased significantly in strength and speed. This puts the added value that companies generate for their customers under much more rapid and sustained pressure than was the case a few years ago. Another is that many companies are experiencing more and more problems with implementing their strategic initiatives. Recent studies have shown that the rate of ineffective strategic initiatives is around 50%. This translates to a waste of resources that companies can no longer afford.
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