Sound planning basis for all business units

Continuous growth in the Asian market was threatening to exhaust METTLER TOLEDO’s production capacity in China over the medium term. To expand capacity the company planned the construction of a new factory in the Changzhou region. The first task was to reorganize its production network in a future-oriented way. This involved the challenge of achieving an optimal distribution of the company‘s various production and logistics functions across its four locations in China. The objectives of the project were to optimize the supply chain between the locations, to achieve synergies between the various production areas and to enable the greatest possible flexibility with respect to potential future market developments. With this in mind, the plans for the new factory on the greenfield site needed to deliver optimized intra-company logistics as well as efficient and flexible production structures.

Tasks of UNITY

Working with METTLER TOLEDO, UNITY developed a future-oriented production network and an optimal layout for the new facility in Changzhou, aligning these with company’s growth strategy. The tasks of UNITY were specifically:

• Analysis of growth targets, space constraints, and internal customer-supplier relationships
• Development of production network scenarios as well as factory concepts for both the greenfield site and an existing site
• Planning and dimensioning of the areas with respect to the resource- and building requirements
• Development and evaluation of the production and logistics concepts together with METTLER TOLEDO
• Planning the layout of the facility and its use of space to allow for potential future expansions of its capacity

Benefits for the Client

The project to reorganize its production network provided METTLER TOLEDO with a sound planning basis for all the business units at the three locations. Space requirements and logistics costs were calculated for each scenario. The specific recommendation that was made for the organization of the network enabled METTLER TOLEDO to plan the new factory in a future-proof and modularly expandable way. The company also benefited from a dimensioning of the space and resources that aligned with its specific business requirements. The optimized planning not only resulted in an increase of productivity in the new factory but also optimized internal logistics and warehousing.