Change Management + 3D printing = 100% profit

Change Management and 3D printing live in action: The combination leads to more revenue for our clients

As part of our coop­er­a­tion with Stein­beis Con­sult­ing Cen­ter IMAPS, we have joint­ly advised a com­pa­ny in both 3D print­ing and change man­age­ment. Our client is a man­u­fac­tur­er of plas­tic parts by injec­tion mold­ing and a pio­neer in the use of the 3D print­ing process. In par­tic­u­lar, as an own­er-man­aged com­pa­ny, the com­pa­ny faces the con­stant chal­lenge of stay­ing com­pet­i­tive. That is why they have rec­og­nized the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by the new tech­nol­o­gy and have devel­oped a nov­el pro­duc­tion process.

Thanks to the use of new mate­ri­als and the pro­duc­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties, it is now pos­si­ble to man­u­fac­ture prod­ucts more cost-effec­tive­ly in small batch­es and thus to posi­tion them­selves against the com­peti­tors. At the same time, how­ev­er, the com­pa­ny also sees chal­lenges aris­ing from Indus­try 4.0 and Addi­tive Man­u­fac­tur­ing. For exam­ple, the tech­nol­o­gy required a major rethink­ing on the part of the devel­op­ers and the tool man­u­fac­tur­ers. After all, the devel­op­ment times are declin­ing and the sea­soned engi­neer must acknowl­edge the fact that there are quite dif­fer­ent pos­si­bil­i­ties for him to devel­op a work piece.

At the same time, the employ­ees in the admin­is­tra­tive depart­ments are con­front­ed with the fact that cus­tomers expect a high­er degree of stan­dard­iza­tion in the bid­ding process: enter­ing the nec­es­sary data on the web­site while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly trans­fer­ring the order to the machine makes peo­ple the guardian of the data. At the same time, the machine and machine oper­a­tors are also required to be more flex­i­ble. Not only does work become more per­son­al-even dur­ing work­ing hours, there­fore result­ing in poor con­tact and thus requir­ing knowl­edge beyond what was orig­i­nal­ly learned.

The com­pa­ny has rec­og­nized the need for a good change man­age­ment in the intro­duc­tion of the 3D print­ing process in its pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty. Not only was the focus on the tech­nol­o­gy, but through the coop­er­a­tion with Stein­beis, the employ­ees were also involved in the devel­op­ment from the very begin­ning. Togeth­er, the oppor­tu­ni­ties that would arise for each employ­ee were explained and the nec­es­sary com­pe­tences acquired. At the same time, the man­ag­er of the whole process had a direct link to the pro­duc­tion.

In the end, the whole process paid off: the com­pa­ny won an invi­ta­tion to ten­der from a glob­al cos­met­ics man­u­fac­tur­er.

We would like to thank you for our time togeth­er and we look for­ward to fur­ther coop­er­a­tion.