REINÆRDT Doors with help from Symbol the fastest supplier in the Netherlands

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“Symbol helped us with several issues, but the most important was to reduce our delivery time,” begins Robert Schuuring, ad interim director at REINÆRDT Doors and Director of Industry at VolkerWessels. “The issue was actually quite simple: 95 percent of our doors were completed within 16 days, and 1 in 20 doors took longer than 16 days. The lead time of all doors had to be reduced to one week. But how do you initiate such an improvement project, which has so much impact on the organization? By bringing in an external party – even though we already had several people internally trained in the Lean philosophy. After all, change is the hardest thing in the world. Everyone thinks it should be done, but secretly no one wants it. “We’ve always done it this way, haven’t we? Strange eyes compel in that case.”

Nine subprojects

Because Schuuring had worked with Symbol before, the choice for the external party was quickly made. “Our Symbol consultant became our external referee, the expert to guide us to a faster delivery time,” says Schuuring. “The first step: value stream mapping. All problems were mapped and, based on that, proposals were made for redesigning our processes based on Lean techniques. Schuuring’s colleague Lukas Muntinga, Operations Manager, adds, “Next, together we identified nine subprojects that were necessary to reach our final goal. Those projects were divided among project leaders, who of course had to work on their own but could always fall back on Symbol’s professional help. This also proved to be two of our key success factors: the division of the improvement project into multiple projects and the choice for expert coaching. Because the project can rightly be called a success: within about four months we had reached our goal – a delivery time of one week.”

Improvement signs at Reinaerdt Doors

Key challenge: culture change

One of the sub-projects to be taken up for this was a machine that needed to have a higher capacity – a thousand doors per day. Furthermore, the plant’s infrastructure was completely turned upside down. “But the most important subproject had to do with minimizing our buffer sizes,” Muntinga says. “5,500 doors in stock was quite normal. The consequence of too large a buffer is that doors have to wait a long time, which of course has a negative knock-on effect on delivery time. Together with our consultant, we worked on an optimal buffer size of 2,500 doors.” All of these sub-projects together, of course, took some doing. Muntinga: “Continuous improvement requires employee awareness, a culture change. Our managers tried to create that awareness themselves, but Symbol provided things that made the story easier to tell. And with success, because ultimately the help from within the organization was great.”

Achieved the desired result

And, as I said, that produced the desired result: thanks to the right plan of action, but also the expert coaching by Symbol and, of course, the commitment of REINÆRDT Deuren’s project managers and employees, the delivery time of the doors was reduced to one week. Says Schuuring, “We used to deliver doors painstakingly within three weeks. Now we whistlingly deliver five thousand doors to our customers every week. A great result that also has a positive impact on our sales. We can now call ourselves the fastest supplier in the Netherlands, which of course attracts (new) customers. But the improvement project with Symbol has also had a lasting effect on our organization, and that is also an important result for us. The next improvement project is already in the pipeline: first time right. We will take on that project ourselves, but using the approach that Symbol has taught us.”