On November 11, 2016 Rational was announced as the overall winner of the Manufacturing Excellence (MX) Award in Berlin and was delighted to be awarded another prize for winning the logistics and network management category. The category and overall winner is chosen by an expert jury who award the prize to companies for their “excellent services”.
Rational has won the MX Award in various categories on several occasions, yet this is the first time the company has been announced as the overall winner of the MX Award. The expert jury was particularly impressed by the “outstanding services” in all categories provided by the cooking appliance manufacturer based in Landsberg am Lech, Germany. “The company offers a well-balanced service package across all categories, performing on a very high level. Rational sets benchmarks in virtually every area – there isn’t a category where it falls behind the others in the competition”, was the summarising statement from the expert jury.
Happy winners: Dr Peter Stadelmann and Franz Ehelechner (second and third person from left) with Dr. Inga Michler (economic reporter WELT-group) and Claus Garnjost (CEO Gildemeister Drehmaschinen GmbH)On these grounds, four benchmarks were enough to seal the overall win for Rational. One aspect focused on the idea of the satisfied customer, a factor which is conveyed to employees through the production strategy, training courses and internal events and could be found represented in all areas of the company. The fact that chefs are actively involved in the company underlines the excellent customer-centric strategy throughout the group. The jury also acknowledged the company’s excellent services with regard to further development and product rollout. “The product is developed by following a product roadmap and clearly defined, transparent processes in research & development. Products are launched with big-bang rollouts, in other words every single process is converted together on the rollout date”, commented the MX experts.
From Rational’s perspective, this can only be achieved when all its teams pull together in the same direction. The manufacturer is conscious of the fact that employees play a decisive role in the success of the company which is why it has developed its own intrapreneurship scheme across all processes – the “U.i.U.®” where employees are invited to act as entrepreneurs on behalf of the company. As part of the concept, employees independently collect their orders and carry out every single installation step on one product. The jury also emphasised that permanent process innovations are designed and developed in all subareas of the company and are supported by excellent knowledge of system methods and a cascading shopfloor management strategy. Furthermore, employees are extensively involved in process optimisations through the “intrapreneurship” strategy which increasingly nurtures a culture of continuous improvement. Also it is a fact that Rational was able to generate savings of EUR 2.1 million in 2016 alone by promoting this culture of improvement.
Finally, aspects of logistics and network management also sealed the overall win of the MX Award. Rational had already won this category last year and managed to convince the jury once again this year. “While logistics and production processes remained at an outstandingly high level and new standards could be set in production control, suggestions on how to improve transparency and standardise processes from last year were taken on board and helped to leverage the maximum from the company. The entire plant is now operating at an extremely high level”, a fact which convinced the expert jury to award Rational with the MX Award in the logistics and network management category for a second year running.
“The customer is always the number one priority at Rational. Innovations and process optimisations are also ranked second behind this corporate mission. We are extremely pleased to have received the MX Award as the overall winner and see it as recognition of Rational’s own corporate strategy”, commented Peter Wiedemann, Technical Director at RATIONAL AG.
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