A project at the oldest industrial company in Hesse was threatening to become uneconomical. The project was a production order from a well-known OEM. The client had managed the project technically, but the costs were getting out of hand. The industrial company therefore initially commissioned the interim manager to manage the crisis. He was tasked with significantly reducing purchasing and production costs. In further mandates, he was then entrusted with transforming the purchasing department from an ordering office to a strategically oriented purchasing department in the role of purchasing manager and realigning the production of the product group for the OEM in the long term.
Short-term savings in material costs realized
The client was about to receive the order for a pre-series production. However, the manufacturing costs for the product were not yet acceptable. The interim manager was given the task of reducing material costs by 40 percent in a short space of time. To this end, he concentrated primarily on working with the development department to look for cost-cutting potential in the specification and with the existing suppliers.
After intensive discussions with the in-house engineers and suppliers, the interim manager succeeded in getting the project into the green zone within 6 weeks. The order to create prototypes and the nomination for the next steps were issued.
Purchasing office transformed into a sustainable purchasing department
After the surprising departure of the purchasing manager, the interim manager was asked to take on this role for a limited period. The brief was to transform the purchasing department from an ordering office into a sustainable strategic purchasing department.
Organizationally and personally, the purchasing department had become entrenched in established structures, which posed a major challenge. The interim manager initially concentrated on getting to know the employees in Purchasing for the transformation. This included intensive coaching, with which the interim manager enabled the teams to think and act strategically. In this context, an "obstructionist" was also removed from the department.
Roles in Purchasing reorganized and product group management introduced
In parallel, the interim manager reorganized Purchasing. He reassigned roles according to competencies and skills and introduced a product group management system. He also negotiated with suppliers.
In total, the measures led to savings of several million euros within a year. Purchasing is now strategically aligned with short-term, medium-term and long-term goals.
After handing over the purchasing department to a new purchasing manager, the interim manager was entrusted with a third mandate to make the production of the measurement technology product group "automotive-ready".
Output doubled within weeks as production manager for measurement technology
The task was clear: the production team had to be trained and educated in 2-shift operation, and the processes had to be optimized and secured. Output was to be doubled within 3 weeks and production was to be organized from a workshop.
By consistently avoiding waste, safeguarding processes and radically reorganizing production, the interim manager succeeded in increasing production by 100 percent in cooperation with the teams. It was also possible to switch to single-shift operation. Among other things, this progress resulted from the interim manager parallelizing processes connected in series, introducing inspection points after various production steps and significantly increasing the number of cycles by reprogramming a robot.
In the next step, the interim manager worked with Industrial Engineering to create the automation concept for a line in order to prepare for the potential start of series production in 12 months.
