Annual Report 2011 (5.07 MB, PDF-File) - Oerlikon

Output improved
by 30 %
“For a long time, we underestimated the link between teamwork
and improved performance,” says Wolfgang Ehrk, Head
of Operations at Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum. Ehrk considers the
systematic involvement of skilled production workers as the
basis for successful continuous improvement and increased
profitability. The idea: If employees are given the opportunity to
identify workplace improvements, they will then take ownership
of execution.
By engaging employees in this way, the teams in some areas
improved their manufacturing output by 30 % within nine
months. “Of course, it took a number of individual steps to get
us there, but the fact that this success will have such a longrange
impact and was so measurable can be directly attributed
to our team approach.”
For instance, the demand for turbo-molecular pumps – premium
pumps that create high pressure – is growing, and Oerlikon
Vacuum wanted to not only produce more pumps, but also
integrate new products into the production process. The company
sought to double production output within two years, but
without expanding the physical plant. This meant that the size
of the current assembly lines had to be dramatically reduced.
Together with Ishan Roth and Norbert Tollas, who are responsible
for production at the Cologne site, the employees responded
to this challenge and launched a team project in
which the assembly employees themselves decided how best
to shrink the footprint of production lines. “No one knows the
production floor better than our employees,” Roth says.
Teamwork as a value-creation process
The six-member assembly line team considered a variety of
possible layouts, concentrating on which tools and machines
could be eliminated. The team created a set of practical action
plans, submitted them to Ishan Roth and Sebastian Boll,
Oerlikon Leybold’s coordinator for teamwork, and subsequently
executed the plans. Well-known workplace organization
methodologies from the Japanese automotive industry were
employed in this process.
The team, who designed their workplaces themselves, reduced
the amount of space required by the line, succeeded in optimizing
the flow of materials, shortened distances and, most impor-
Employees took over ownership executing improvement measures.