Q&A: Ben Proesmans on the Factory of the Future

What does Provan do?

We deliver what we call tailor-made metal solutions. These include sheet laser cutting, laser cutting of tubes and pipes, bending and welding of metal parts and assembly. We have a broad range of customers: from developers of medical equipment to heating producers and shop interior manufacturers.

Provan received the Factory of the Future award for implementing a Quick Response Manufacturing system. What’s that?

Quick Response Manufacturing, or QRM, is a production methodology that focuses on time instead of costs. The process of “time thinking” instead of “cost thinking” results in a reduction of the lead time – the time between placement of an order and delivery of the final product – that has a material impact on the global costs.

For example, we were looking for an alternative production method that would enable us to manufacture and deliver stoves as quickly as possible. A batch production of 60 sets used to take around four weeks. However, with an increase in the number of product variants, we feared that our production method would cause problems in terms of lead times and available warehouse space. So we decided to implement an entirely new production method: QRM.

What impact did it have on production?

On the shop floor, QRM is a combination of two things: smart production, thanks to our innovative software – we are the first company inBelgiumto use this system – and the physical visualisation of our production activities. As a consequence, our operators are guided by a thoroughly digital system, and thanks to the use of coloured flags in the system, they organise their work completely independently. These flags indicate the order of the transport carts and metal parts in the different production steps, so everything can follow one another in rapid succession.

Were you satisfied?

Definitely! Our products can now be made in batches of 15 sets. As a consequence, the lead time for each set has decreased by a massive 85%, from three-and-a-half to four weeks to just three days. The packing process is now twice as fast and the smooth workflow means we don’t need to stock large quantities of parts anymore, freeing up lots of storage space.

But this is just one example where the benefits of QRM are clearly quantified. Thanks to the QRM approach, we are implementing a production methodology that is guaranteed to reduce our total costs in the long run.