Process efficiency in beer and wood
- 20.11.2024
- Research
Participants in the exchange of experiences at the Egger Brewery in Unterradlberg.
The Lean Management experience group visited the Egger plants in St. Pölten and discussed best practices in the introduction of shop floor management.
The Egger company invited the participants of the 21st meeting of the experience group Lean Management & Six Sigma to their wood-based materials plant in Unterradlberg and to the affiliated brewery in St. Pölten. Prof. (FH) Dr. Martin Adam, Director of Studies for the Master's program in ERP Systems & Business Process Management at the University of Applied Sciences Kufstein Tirol, also took part as the group's organizer. The visit took place during a phase in which Egger is testing its LEAD program in this plant as part of a pilot project, which allowed the expertise of the participants to be incorporated directly into the development.
ACHIEVE NEW HIGHS WITH LEAD
For many years, Egger has used Six Sigma, a total quality management method that ensures quality at all levels of the company, for its operational excellence activities in its more than 24 plants. The group-wide LEAD program was launched to integrate employee ideas even more effectively and create more transparency regarding the performance of workflows. LEAD (Leadership, Awareness, Empowerment, Development) comprises several elements, including comprehensive shop floor management, a 5S initiative to set process standards, and a suggestion scheme with accompanying implementation projects. The initiative is supported by lean mentors and lean managers in the plants, as well as extensive awareness and expert training, as the head of the initiative, Mr. Bernhard Ebner, explained.
MORE TRANSPARENCY FOR EVERYONE
For employees, it is crucial to know where they currently stand and which process goals are to be achieved in order to be able to make targeted improvements. Currently, the requirements are known to managers via the Management Execution System (MES), but are not always transparent to employees. To create this transparency, shop floor boards have been installed in production. They visualize important key figures and performance in the SQDPC (Safety, Quality, Delivery, People, Cost) categories and are accessible to all departments.
Information is continuously discussed between superiors and employees, and measures for further development are planned. The participants in the experience group, themselves experts in lean management in their companies, discussed the measures already implemented at Egger and shared their own experiences. Among other things, the focus was on the importance of regular shop floor meetings, the necessary connection between corporate strategy and key figures on the shop floor, and the relevance of holding shop floor meetings at different management levels.
WOOD AND Beverage
The LEAD program is not limited to the wood processing plants, but has also been implemented in the Egger brewery. A final visit was made to the brewery, which has been selling approximately 1 million hectoliters of beer per year for over 350 years. The LEAD program supports the areas of cleanliness and a high number of variants, including changeovers, and thus contributes to improved performance.