2005 Award Winners
Award-winning project: Complex rationalization in factory operations
Project partners: Koenig & Bauer AG | Steinbeis Transfer Center Production Technology and Waste Management Logistics/Dresden
Continuous product innovation and constant process optimisation are essential prerequisites for sustained economic success. To ensure this, a holistic approach is required for the analysis, evaluation and design of the product–technology–factory complex, as well as for its implementation. Koenig und Bauer AG (KBA), Radebeul plant, and the Steinbeis Transfer Centre for Production Technology and Waste Management Logistics (STPE) in Dresden are jointly realising this objective by applying the identical consulting principle of ‘technical interrelationships between time and cost’ to all tasks relevant to the company.
At its Radebeul plant, KBA manufactures sheetfed offset presses in all formats and occupies a leading position in this segment of the global market. In order not only to meet the constant pressure for innovation in the printing press industry but also to actively shape it, KBA continuously and consistently drives forward innovations and optimisations across all areas of the company.
External consultants are, of course, brought in to support these processes. In doing so, the company recognised that separate projects with changing partners often fail to achieve the optimal effect due to a lack of synergies across the business divisions.
The STPE’s ability to achieve technically sound and economically relevant results through its holistic methodology perfectly met KBA’s requirements. On this basis, projects have been successfully implemented in various areas of the company as part of the partnership, which has been in place since 2000. These projects have ranged from process and activity analysis in various areas of sub-assembly and pre-assembly of printing towers and final assembly, through to comprehensive staff deployment planning; they have also extended to the analysis and optimisation of tool usage and technological parameters in machining operations, as well as benchmarks across a wide range of fields and the redesign of the dispatch area.
The understanding of the company’s internal processes and their interrelationships, which has been continuously developed, ultimately also supports the current project: the design of a new production facility, its integration into the company layout, and the design of associated technological processes.