Amberg Plant is the “Best Factory in Europe”

2007-May-27 | The Siemens electronics manufacturing plant in Amberg, Germany, has won first prize in the “Best Factory in Europe” competition. The award, which is issued by the French management school INSEAD and the department of Production Management at the German business school WHU, will be presented during a management conference that will take place in Cologne at the end of September.

The Amberg plant, part of Siemens Automation and Drives, has more than 1,000 employees who produce high-tech Simatic control devices that are used mainly in industrial production. Among other things, these mini-computers ensure effective control of production lines, thereby enabling goods to be manufactured quickly, efficiently and flexibly. Applications range from automobile production to bottling systems in breweries. The processes used to manufacture such devices must be optimally synchronized, which is why the plant management in Amberg depends on the close cooperation between production and development units. This approach enables them to reduce development times and keep pace with ever-shorter innovation cycles. The Amberg plant beat out numerous competitors for the award, receiving top marks in the categories Operational Strategy, Supply Chain Management, Organization and Personnel, Service and Partner Management, and Continuous Improvement .

Along with sophisticated technology and logistics systems, it is above all the people who work in the plant that have made it so successful. Each employee in Amberg, for example, accounts for an average of 15 suggestions for improvement that are implemented every year. Each production team also regularly analyzes production problems and tests new approaches. This outstanding effort and flexibility on the part of the workforce in Amberg is one of the reasons why Simatic has made Siemens the world market leader for industrial control systems, with one out of every three control units used worldwide being a Siemens product.