Wutha-Farnroda, Germany

Factory Redesign Workshop at Cicor Digital Elektronik GmbH

On January 28th and 29th a Factory Redesign workshop was held at Cicor site Wutha-Farnroda. The workshop was initiated by Marco Kechele. Based on his great experiences and wide overview of many production sites he supported the team at CDE during the workshop.

In preparation of the workshop a complete paper layout of the manufacturing building including all machinery and equipment was created.

On the first day we started to work on the target state for CDE in terms of sales budget 2029. The task for the team was to figure out the needed number of employees and equipment necessary to realize the 2029 sales budget for the complete manufacturing process starting from parts incoming area and ending at finished goods shipment area.

Second day started with an analyze of the actual layout. A value stream mapping for the internal processes and a visualization of productive and non-productive areas in the manufacturing building was done. It was obvious for the team that there are several topics which could be improved. Now the most exciting part of the workshop started: All the participants were eager to hear and discuss each other’s ideas for the redesign of the factory layout.

At the end of the workshop we summarized all ideas and created an action plan including work packages which will be regularly followed up (e.g. lowering internal material stocks to reduce the storage areas, redesign of the complete THT area, feasibility checks and so on …). In conclusion, we can say that we have developed a concept that improves material flow, enables better accessibility to individual machines and will therefore increase overall productivity.

Although some of the topics seem very challenging, I am convinced that we can implement them step by step together as a team.

I would like to thank all workshop participants and our COO Marco Kechele for their great collaboration.

Tim Losereith
Head of Production