OPERATION “TOYOTA”

In the industrial world, excellence in these terms has been reached by the car manufacturer Toyota, now a model for all those companies, such as Mattei, that want to increase their productivity and be more responsive to market demands.

In technical terms it is called “lean management”, but others simply define it as the “Toyota Method”, taken from the name of the automotive giant who successfully applied it. It is a production philosophy, born in the East after World War II which then spread to the West after the global downturn in 2009. The concept is based on “doing more with less waste”, placing itself in many ways, as an alternative to mass production. The results of its application are extraordinary for reducing both management time and costs, as well as improving the quality of products and services.

Mattei with the support of Eng. Matteo Consagra from the Lean Management Institute, undertook this important cultural change two years ago in the management of operational processes, in order to increase the perceived value of the production by the end customer. Leading the company into the world of lean management is A.P., new COO of the company since January 2018, who has a deep know-how in this field developed during different previous international experiences. “Contrary to what one might think, the model proposed by lean management is not based on the introduction and use of new technologies, but on the reorganisation of industrial processes. All levels of the company are involved in setting a new organisational chart, new logistical workflows, and therefore a new way of producing. Currently we have completed the first phase of aligning the company to a common strategy, that is being continuously monitored”.

For some months in Mattei a purpose-built space was set up where the heads of each department could meet periodically to share about activities and projects, check progress, plan corrective actions, define new objectives and the actions needed to achieve them, setting standards of work to guarantee constant results over time. “The Mattei Obeya Room is literally covered with A3 sheets of paper, allowing us to analyse the projects in a structured way and measure the results”.

On an operational level, lean management focuses on the demand coming in from the market and no longer on the supply; producing quantities of products aligned with actual demand, avoiding waste in the movement of materials and improving flexibility. This approach leads to a drastic change in production flows, which must become faster and more agile, and for the workforce, who need to specialise and take on more responsibility. “To respond faster to customer demand, we are favouring a one-piece flow approach, i.e. the production of one piece at a time avoiding the accumulation of material along the production line. The next step will be the transition from a system of “assembly islands” to one of production cells, optimising the use of both space and resources. It will no longer be the responsibility of one single worker taking care of the assembly of a complex product like a compressor, but a whole team, each of them focusing on a specific phase. With this logic it becomes indispensable to have checks in each production cell to reduce any errors to a minimum, stopping the production line in case of anomalies, without compromising the quality of the final product. In this way you reverse the direction of the process of value creation as it starts right from the customer who in effect pulls the company”.

The managerial approach dictated by lean management must be integrated with the new needs of the SAP software management system, recently introduced in Mattei. “Thanks to SAP we will be able to codify the standards set out by lean management and turn them into efficient and rigorous management processes. All departments across the company are impacted by these cultural and operational changes; from the handling of materials to purchasing process, and from administration through to accounts”.

The streamlining of workflows currently involves the Mattei headquarters in Vimodrone and the Zingonia plant, but it is a slow process with lots of steps towards continuous improvement, that in future will touch the entire Mattei group on a global scale. “The Japanese term for defining this approach of always looking for innovation and evolution is Kaizen. We are setting strict standards in place that can be applied across all plants, considering the specific needs of each market in which we operate. Mattei will strive to involve the suppliers and the distributors in the new workflows, to develop a structured industrial business capable of accelerating time to market and guaranteeing its customers the levels of quality and efficiency that are the prerequisites of being really competitive” concludes A.P.

From Vane Magazine 13, January 2019