Lean Austria

I am happy to announce that I recently joined AHT Cooling Systems. AHT is a world leading supplier of commercial plug-in refrigeration and freezer systems. Our customers are international supermarket chains and branded goods manufacturers.I will try to get back on a regular posting schedule as soon as possible.

The Nutcracker performed by Dancing Kiva Robots:

In produzierenden Unternehmen bringt die Auftragsabwicklung täglich unerwartete Situationen mit sich: z.B. geänderte Kundenbestellungen (in letzter Minute), Ressourcenausfälle (zum ungünstigsten Zeitpunkt), Probleme mit (an sonsten zuverlässigen) Lieferanten u.s.w. Die erste Anlaufstelle ist in solchen Fällen meistens eine Abteilung, die als Produktionsplanung, Disposition, Scheduling oder ähnlich bezeichnet wird. Doch die Aufgaben dieses Bindeglieds zwischen Produktion und dem restlichen Betrieb sollten überdacht werden, meinen Prof. Toni Wäfler und seine Kollegen an der FH Nordwestschweiz und der ETH Zürich. Sie beschäftigen sich intensiv mit dem Zusammenspiel von Mensch und Organisation in der Produktionsplanung und kommen zu dem Schluss, dass Planungs- und Koordinationsaufgaben in verstärkten Maß an die Produktionseinheiten delegiert werden sollten.

Heutige Strategie vieler Unternehmen: Eine zentrale Planung soll alles im Griff haben, und versucht alle Eventualitäten in ihren Plänen zu berücksichtigen.

Die Probleme dabei: (more…)

Der österreichischen Post AG ist kürzlich sein Großkunde Quelle/ Neckermann im Paketdienst abhanden gekommen. Dies hat einen Verlust von ca. 1/3 des Gesamtvolumens im Paketdienst zur Folge und stellt eine wirtschaftliche Katastrophe dar. Wie der Post-Chef darauf reagiert, ist aber nicht gerade überzeugend:

In der Tageszeieitung “Die Presse” wird der Post-Chef heute folgender Maßen zitiert:

Man habe bis zuletzt verhandelt und bei den Preisen deutlich nachgegeben. Letztlich habe sich Quelle für den Post-Konkurrenten Hermes entschieden. Wais: „Ich hätte wahrscheinlich genauso entschieden.“

Hoffentlich hat er in den Verhandlungen mit Quelle nicht ähnlich gut Argumente vorgebracht

“Utilizing lean manufacturing techniques makes sense in any environment! Low volume/ high volume, repetitive/job shop environments all have the same customer requirements; the prime directive for any business should be to produce what is needed, when it is needed and in the quantity needed.”

Bob Castonguay, Lean Manager at TRUMPF Inc. (Trumpf Express Volume 3, 2007 )

The 737 final assembly line is an impressive example: Boeing changed from fixed dock stations to a moving line some years ago. Watch this YouTube video!

(via leanblog.org)

Today someone found my blog using the search term: will sap die. I never used the English word “die” in my posts on SAP. Perhaps Google just confuses languages? The German “die” is just an ordinary article.

I will refrain from suing Google

The year is 2007. The world is entirely occupied by StudiVZ, Facebook and MySpace. Well not entirely! One small district of indomitable Austrians still holds out against the invaders. The overall number of users is of course a ridiculous comparison. But WMC3.at has a fabulous coverage in the district of Liezen. They are reaching more than 10% of the overall population, which is already surprisingly enough. Even in “networking” Scandinavia Facebook adoption is not higher (via zweinull.cc)

Looking at users statistics more deeply, WMC3.at covers about 80% of the kids in the age of 14 to 16!! And the users are very active.

WMC3.at offers many features, typical for social platforms, others are quite unique e.g. a system of “deputy sheriffs”, or that you can collect credit points which improves your ranking.

We will see what the future brings next and whether WMC3.at will be able to cover other regions.

Further reading:

Fm4 radio feature about wmc3.at

Review on Austrian startups

10 Most Successful Web 2.0 Startups

This week I had the opportunity to attend a one day seminar/company visit about organisation of production. In general it was a really interesting day. Senior management openly reported on their efforts and success regarding the implementation of lean manufacturing, i.e. the effective introduction of cellular manufacturing and teams.

The tour of the plant however was ambivalent. On attendee (an experienced plant manager of another company) very politely asked, if there were any benchmarks of the productivity per area?

With hindsight, the observed inventory may not only be caused by huge demand. The applied MRP production planning logic inevitably produces such effects, especially under changing conditions.

To prevent leaving a bad impression, I should say that neither my company nor I has any relationship with that company regarding these topics.

Last week SAP announced Business By Design. But will SAP conquer a new market this time?

In the German magazine Spiegel you can read an interesting article about SAP: SAP executive Léo Apotheker:

“I have to learn the language of small to medium-sized businesses,”

continuing:

For SAP to continue achieving double-digit growth figures, it would have to acquire new customers: small and mid-sized businesses. In this market, only one third of companies had already purchased SAP’s “old” software packages, Business One and All-in-One.

(more…)

…offensichtlich nicht, sonst würde jeder sofort merken, dass SAP auch nur mit Wasser kocht
(via jobblog.ch)

Und der is auch nicht schlecht:
http://home.debitel.net/user/thomgeist/hotline.mp3 (via Projektmanagement Blog)