KME

The history of KME reaches back to the year 1886. Today, the company, which has production locations in Germany, France, Italy, China, and the USA, is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of copper and copper alloy products.

Since 2020, the business, whose central office is in Osnabrück, has organized itself into the areas copper products and other products (e.g., individual customer solutions and maritime applications). For the latter, increased customer requirements such as shorter delivery times and a changed product mix have required a new factory layout in the rod drawing production area.

The Managing Director of KME Special Products GmbH, Dr. Bernhard Hoffmann, is responsible for the special products.

To begin with, the project team took inventory of the value streams and production stages. Then, there was an analogous analysis of the material flows and areas. Furthermore, each production report leaves digital footprints in the system. These can be evaluated with process mining technology. Here, processes were recreated, and transparency was established across the entire flow. In addition to the frequency of additional processes, deviations such as an unplanned set-up are also revealed.

Using the patterns detected, team members worked out which machines should be chained or placed closer together in the future. The basis for this material flow-optimized factory layout and the detailed implementation plan based on it was the combination of digital and proven analog lean analysis.