Supplying C-parts at the right place at the right time means customers can focus on production. Ferdinand Gross prides itself on customised solutions that allow its customers to concentrate on what they do best, as it explains here...
The right screw in the right place at the right time – that’s the art of C‐parts management and an art that Ferdinand Gross is confident it has mastered.
By offering customers individualised consulting, innovative processes, vast experience and customised Kanban solutions, Ferdinand Gross is able to make sure that its customers can concentrate on what’s important – production.
Imagine the following scenario: Parts are being assembled on the production line of a company in the mechanical engineering industry. Production is running at full capacity and deadlines are setting the pace. Suddenly the machines come to a standstill and production is paralysed. What has happened? A certain screw is missing in the process – the supply has run out.
To ensure that this never happens, Ferdinand Gross uses its ample experience to make sure that C‐parts are always at the right place at the right time in the right quantities. “We want to understand how each customer works so that we can deliver a customised range of products precisely adapted to each customer’s needs,” says CEO Thomas Erb.
Standard solutions do not exist at Ferdinand Gross. The company cooperates closely with customers on‐site to screen and optimise their actual needs and develop the appropriate strategies for them. Large quantities or consumable kits? Custom or standard part? One container or two container Kanban? Once these issues are clarified, Ferdinand Gross is able to supply the right fasteners in the right place at the right time in the production process according to requirements. Both parties benefit from such a system – total procurement costs can be lowered by up to 70%.
Anyone working so intensively with Cparts management on a daily basis has to ask the question: ‘How can I do an even better job?’ The over 50 year old Kanban system seemed perfect because materials supply was based solely on consumption in the production process. However, Ferdinand Gross decided to take a different approach – not by investigating the process itself – but by making the downfalls of Kanban supply visible. The problem became clear. Kanban was lacking in transparency. Purchasers had no overview of actual item statuses – there were no options for control. Ferdinand Gross therefore developed FALCON, a web‐based visualisation tool that gave purchasers back their control. FALCON visualises all of the customer’s Kanban storage locations. Implementation of an Excel export function enables the purchaser to control the deployment of C‐parts even more precisely and effectively.
Thanks to the reporting tool, statistics, analyses, and fast reaction to peaks in demand aren’t a problem anymore – and all data, from consumption to inventory turnover to price, is completely transparent. Because FALCON is also available as an app for smartphones and tablets, the customer can stay informed about the status of the Kanban box everywhere, all the time. “With Ferdinand Gross C-parts management is not only simpler but also much more transparent,” says Thomas Erb. “A smart system such as FALCON currently has no real competitors.”
