Our Production System
A world-class manufacturing system
Our manufacturing system is uniquely engineered to deliver top quality
products to our customers efficiently, rapidly and flexibly.
A universal “World Class Manufacturing” program is progressively adapting our
17 production sites and 30 personalization centers around the world to meet our
customers’ fast-changing needs. All our facilities are being put through a step-change
to ensure they match or exceed “Best in Class” standards.
At the same time,
our Innovation and Manufacturing Technology team is developing state of the art
manufacturing technologies to meet the evolving needs of the digital security
market. Key performance indicators are used to enhance our manufacturing
operations and we annually assess our plants’ maturity against 6 improvement
axes. The following examples show this program is achieving concrete results.
- Value Stream Mapping analysis at our Gemenos (France) plant has cut its
lead-time from 13 days to 2, while Curitiba (Brazil) cut this from 8 days to
1.2.
- We developed an operator career path in our Barcelona (Spain),
Montgomeryville (US) and Curitiba (Brazil) plants while promoting employee
participation in improvement workgroups.
- We streamlined our order and industrialization process, and our
Montgomeryville plant cut proofturn by up to 72% by implementing an order
entry team.
- 5S and continuous flow implementation are reducing and standardizing
manufacturing leadtimes.
In China, our plants in Tianjin and Shanghai cut setup times for
personalization and module encapsulation processes by 10%-33%.
- Production personnel are empowered to maintain equipment and participate
in performance improvement workgroups. Our Chambray Les Tours (France) plant
transferred some maintenance operations to operators, reducing downtime by
23% in deployed areas.
- Getting things right first time rather than fixing problems later is key
to the highest quality standards. Our Singapore plant saved 1.7 million
euros by implementing 6Sigma to reduce their cost of non-quality. In Finland,
our Vantaa plant is developing standardized work processes for improved
manufacturing quality and performance.
