Extreme flexibility as a core competence

LEAN manufacturing has played an essential role in the recent years' production strategy. Over the past two years, BB Electronics has managed to fully transform its production through strict use of LEAN tools and methodologies. The massive investments made in the LEAN programme have allowed us to rapidly adapt to the new challenges we are met by today.

In a market where availability and reliability is becoming increasingly important, recent LEAN programmes at BB Electronics have had the goal of increasing our flexibility towards our customers. Through a focused effort on production lead time, rapid and efficient changeovers, mixed pull order planning systems and batch sizes, we have managed to increase our flexibility dramatically - an increase that we felt compelled to realise in order to offer our customers world class performance.

The result has been that BB Electronics today has a whole dedicated production value stream, specifically designed for extreme flexibility. Fully flexible production cells, fully mobile test equipment, and multi-skilled operators are dedicated to this value stream, where the flow is controlled by a simple and efficient FIFO system. Batch sizes not exceeding 1 working shift, standardised workplaces, day-to-day production planning, and dedicated resources in supporting departments are just a few of the many changes made to secure extreme flexibility.

This fully flexible production setup has made it possible to offer our customers just the production platform that they need for rapid production in perfect quality, allowing us to regard extreme flexibility as a core competence of BB Electronics.