Relocation Of Sealant Filling Unit to Hannover
Smaller And Closer – Relocation Of Sealant Filling Unit To Hannover
An expansion of spacial capacities does not always bring about advantages in the production process. Realising this led Weserland to sell its Nienburg site and create appropriate spaces and areas at its home base in Hannover’s Hansastraße. From mid-2016 the sealant filling will be merged in a new hall.
For this purpose, an old production site at Hansastraße will be demolished and a new, even smaller hall built. There are a number of unused areas in other buildings, so that existing capacities will still be available to the same extent, and there are no future restrictions. All this could ultimately be achieved through a detailed layout planning by the Institute of Integrated Production Hannover (IPH).
A core competence of IPH is precisely this: factory planning, incorporating the latest research findings in such factory planning projects. In 2011, they have e.g. restructured the Bahlsen factory in Barsinghausen. This was awarded as ‘Factory of the Year’ by the German magazine ‘Produktion’ and the management consultants of AT Kearney in the category ‘Excellent Location Development’.
For the current project with IPH, the planning of the site consolidation of Nienburg and Hannover, a number of common target definitions were initially developed (for example, in logistics and material flow). Those were then transferred into concrete requirements –particularly concerning short transport distances.
As part of an extensive factory analysis information about the current state was gathered (for example, resources, material flow, structural restrictions) as well as forecasting and historical data collected. In addition, the warehouse situation regarding raw materials (especially empty bottles) and finished goods (bottled, packaged and tagged sealant) were taken into consideration.
On this basis IPH developed several layout variants. Different arrangements of warehouses, buffers and equipment were established. Those were then evaluated on the basis of the previously proven requirements. In this way an efficient as well as promising logistics variant could be selected for implementation. So in the end, the new building will be even smaller than the old one.
The IPH, since starting as a spin-off from the Leibniz University of Hannover in 1988, specialised in research and development, consulting and training in the topics of process engineering, production automation, logistics and XXL products. Its clients include tool and mould making companies as much as mechanical engineering, aerospace; plus the automotive, electrical and forging industry.
