Long-term increase in production efficiency

Together with UNITY, IWN has already achieved an increase in the efficiency of the entire organization with several “lean production projects” in the past. Now, the continued growth of the company has exhausted the capacities of the Bielefeld location which can no longer be extended. In addition to that, the old building no longer meets the requirements of modern production workflows and an attractive working environment. The project “IWN 2.0” was established to plan the “perfect factory” for IWN. The perfect factory provides optimum support for the corporate strategy, the production and logistics processes, and the new organization structures. The factory is aiming at sustainably increasing the production efficiency and competitive edge by future-oriented management. An essential building block of sustainability is the integration of a cost-effective and ecological energy concept in the new factory.

Tasks of UNITY

On the basis of the corporate strategy UNITY developed the perfect factory in cooperation with IWN. The results serve as the basis for the architectural design, the process organization and the business planning. The tasks of UNITY included:

• Defining planning goals based on the strategy
• Recording the production and logistics processes
• Defining ideal process sequences and production structures
• Dimensioning resources and space requirements for administration, logistics and production
• Planning the facility layout
• Drawing up the business planning up to 2017
• Providing support in the creation of a holistic energy concept
• Designing the operational and structural organization
• Supporting the implementation

Benefits for the client

The “perfect factory” for IWN is future-proof and can be scaled up modularly in all areas. The production structures and workflows planned ensure a long-term increase of the production efficiency by 20 percent. This is achieved, for example, by optimized multi-machine operation and reduction of the paths by 50 percent. All surfaces and resources were dimensioned according to need. In addition, due to the planning basis previously drawn up it was possible to reduce the cost incurred by the executing companies by 20 percent. This enables IWN to continue on their overall growth course and to achieve their long-term goal of doubling their turnover. In combination with a holistic energy concept, the completely future-oriented production ensures a sustained increase in IWN’s competitiveness.