Strengthening buyers and suppliers
The order books of Michael Weinig AG are full. Read how the purchasing department of the world’s largest manufacturer of machines and systems in solid wood processing created capacities and strengthened its suppliers against this background.
Jörg Bürgers, Head of Strategic Corporate Purchasing at Weinig, explains: “For example, we needed significantly more control cabinets than our production could manufacture. Therefore, we strengthened and developed corresponding suppliers to be able to optimally supply our assembly. It was important here that the cooperation with the new suppliers worked right from the start.”
For Jürgen Bundschuh, Team Leader Purchasing at Weinig, another challenge was that some suppliers were also unable to deliver because input materials such as sheet metal were difficult to obtain. Therefore, Weinig supported these companies in procuring input materials such as steel sheets. This, in turn, allowed these key suppliers to become more closely tied to Weinig. Bundschuh says, “This example shows how important it is for us to approach suppliers as partners in order to safeguard the competitiveness of our own supply chains.”
Since the purchasing department also needed capacities for classic operational purchasing activities such as triggering purchase orders, invoice verification and master data maintenance, the decision was made to bring external support on board in the form of Kloepfel Consulting. They helped to keep the most important suppliers close to the company and the production processes by “man coverage” to continuously supply the assembly with sufficient quantities. After just two to three weeks, it was possible to see from key figures (e.g. open orders or shortfalls) that the targets set had been achieved.
Weinig’s holistic project also illustrates how valuable external support is, for example, in the event of supply bottlenecks. Bürgers comments: “We had relied on the external support of the purchasing consultancy Kloepfel Consulting because we had to be successful quickly and had no time for experiments. Together with design, production and assembly, we then pulled together to manage all orders.”
As in previous crises, the current situation underscores the importance of purchasing for companies. According to the latest VDMA reports in Q4, supply bottlenecks now affect more than 80% of companies in the mechanical and plant engineering sector.
Contact:
Kloepfel Group
Christopher Willson
Tel.: 0211 941 984 33
Pempelforter Str. 50
40211 Duesseldorf
Mail: rendite@kloepfel-consulting.com