“Never a dull moment!"

An interview with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Augustin

Professor Augustin, your Steinbeis Transfer Center for Process Management  in Product Development, Production and Logistics, which is based  at Reutlingen University, has been specializing in the end-to-end  optimization of business processes for over 10 years, across the manufacturing  industry, trade and services. What was behind your decision to  take a holistic approach to optimization and how does this translate to  implementation in practice? 

In business, success has many fathers. In other words, there are many  buttons that can be pressed in a business to be successful. This is not  just in terms of processes, but also the people, the technical infrastructure,  IT, management systems, even how you deal with clients and  suppliers. Only when all of these factors work in harmony does everything  function as a whole. 

It’s a complex, interwoven network of influencing factors, and to do  justice to this, ever since our early days, we’ve always taken a holistic  approach to things, building on each constituent part. In practical  terms, this has meant we’ve had to work on specific areas within a  project, while always referring to the other constituent parts. We had to  know what impact these other parts would have on the specific topic we  were looking at and include that in the consultation. So “holistic” also  means that – in addition to developing or planning projects – we also  implement them. Around 95% of our projects involve implementation,  so we don’t just help the company with the planning, we also deliver the  project. The advantage with this for clients is that they can count on us  to stay highly committed. For us, the advantage is that we can gather  more experience on each project, especially during implementation and  this can then flow back into new projects during the earlier planning  stage, which is ultimately also of benefit to the customer. 

Your Steinbeis Enterprise is based in the Neckar-Alb region, which is  known for its strong industrial base, especially in mechanical engineering,  the automotive industry, medical technology, textiles,  biotechnology, forestry, and regenerative energy. What impact does this  economic environment have on your work at the center?

Neckar-Alb is shaped by the highly innovative medium-sized companies  in the area that operate on an international level. If they weren’t, they  wouldn’t survive in their sectors of industry, which have high demands.  Being innovative is not just about products but also about processes. In  international competition, it’s not enough for products by themselves to  be good, they have to be produced efficiently and distributed worldwide  through efficient supply chains.

For us, being a partner to industry means that we have to stay completely  up to speed with the latest developments in terms of professional skills  and methods. We also have to develop solutions which don’t yet exist in  the way they are actually needed. Being innovative is thus the key to our  success. Even if the region of Neckar-Alb is a strong growth area, we  can’t afford to rely solely on this area in physical terms, since lots of  companies are now global. So we’re now also working for several  customers on an international level. This adheres to the philosophy of  thinking locally, but acting globally.

Your work focuses on developing concepts for business divisions and  implementing them, as well as designing and optimizing processes, but  also introducing new methods and IT solutions in product development,  production, and logistics. Which of your services are currently in strong  demand from companies? To what extent have customer requirements  and needs changed in recent years?

Developments in product development, production, and logistics have  varied quite a bit over the course of the last ten years. There has been  major progress in product development in terms of applying methods to  the optimization of processes. Methods in the field of quality management  and lean management have increasingly made inroads into our  projects and the work of developers and designers has become more  efficient. We noticed with our projects in these areas that the concept  of customer requirements is becoming more and more prevalent. At the  same time, the markets have come up to speed, and products and  services have to be developed in shorter and shorter cycles. They also  have to be an exact match with the requirements of the customer in  shorter time to market. This can no longer be accounted for profitably in  the development process without strict application of methods, so  we’ve done some intensive, yet very successful work with some clients  in this area.

In the area of production, demand was and still is strong for applying  lean management and six sigma philosophies. We were able to provide  plenty of good input in such projects based on our holistic approaches –  and still can today – as the requirements of our customers have turned  more and more in recent years toward the sustainability of implemented  measures.

In the area of logistics, we’re currently experiencing a huge surge in  inquiries relating to the optimization, planning and implementation of  warehousing facilities. These range from process optimization to the  construction of new facilities, with everything in between. One trend at  the moment is the application of lean management and six sigma  philosophies in warehouses, an area offering significant potential to  leverage improvements. We’ve been a bit of a trendsetter in terms of  lean warehousing, which enabled us to capture the imagination of a  wider audience in 2008. We’ve now specialized even further in this area  and are currently working more closely on topics like shop floor  management. We’ve also been able to adhere to our holistic approach in  this area. As Aristotle said, “the whole is greater than the sum of its  parts.”

Your client base includes a predominance of medium-sized customers.  What challenges do you feel this poses, not just for yourself but also for  the work of your Steinbeis Enterprise?

Since many medium-sized enterprises serve clients of all sizes, including  large organizations, we also have to know and understand the business  environment of those companies. As a result, we also work with big  companies, from Hamburg in the north to Munich in the south. Through  our projects we’re exposed to the language of our customers, and their  suppliers, and this feeds back into project know-how, spanning all parts  of the process chain. It also equips us to plan and implement projects  more holistically. 

One fundamental challenge we face stems from the fact that the  methods of lean managements and six sigma are more geared to highvolume  serial production and are not necessarily a good fit with  medium-sized enterprises. Nevertheless, to still be positioned to derive  benefit from these methods, they have to be adapted to the many  application scenarios faced by SMEs. This is a challenge for us, but one  we’re excited to take on as it’s actually quite fun continually overhauling  systems and adapting to the specific requirements of the customer.

So there’s never a dull moment as each project has its own idiosyncrasies  which can suddenly become a new or different kind of challenge! We  see ourselves as a production line for expert advice, but nothing is off  the shelf. Everything revolves around the problem of the client so each  solution is customized, even if it’s based on tried-and-tested methods.

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