Lean Management and Lean Manufacturing

In 2018, Solera implemented the Lean philosophy to directly improve its production processes, initially implementing each of the processes (Lean Manufacturing and Lean Management) in the Production and Logistics departments, and then progressively rolling them out in the other departments.

This model, thanks to the cooperation of Solera employees, reduces jobs and operations that hinder and slow down the creation and manufacturing processes to a minimum. Operations which do not add any value to the production process and which, thanks to the collaboration of workers, are easier to spot.

Lean Management

Lean Management is a methodology that is gradually gaining ground. A methodology with the ultimate goal of improving processes, always with a view to the end customer and the continuous improvement and contribution to having as little impact on the environment as possible. Therefore, this process could be summed up based on three fundamental pillars:

• Providing ongoing value to customers.
• Continuous process improvement and, in turn, company growth.
• Elimination of all activities and waste from the process that do not benefit or contribute to the final product.

At Solera, this process has been successfully implemented in the technical and sales departments.

In the technical department, the implementation of project management was a widespread success, since a system was put in place conceived from the experience of everyone involved in the projects, which helped to create matrix timescales to base the management on, taking into account all the tasks to be carried out, execution times and lead times, costs, etc. All of this with a view to having total control over costs and schedules, in order for added value to be provided to the company's strategy and planning, by being able to know roughly when a product will be available to be launched on the market.

 

Lean Manufacturing

This is a process mainly aimed at managing continuous progress, focused, in particular, on increased competitiveness by reducing the organisation's operational costs.

For the time being, this philosophy has been implemented at Solera's production plants and its logistics centre. This has led to a significant transformation; resulting in a 100% improvement-oriented organisation.

Ultimate customer satisfaction is the main objective of this system. Nevertheless, the process of fulfilling this objective has enabled Solera to continue make strides in its own digitalisation process. All of this with the help of other tools such as “Lean Improvement”, from the company Progressa Lean, which will enable the advancement of the Lean Manufacturing process and M.E.S. (Manufacturing Execution System), which enables the company to continue to improve its competitiveness.

Thanks to the implementation of these continuous improvement systems, there has been an improvement in communication between different levels of the organisation, favouring Solera's processes and activities.

Not just that, it has also facilitated the implementation of other types of tools and projects, such as meetings known as TOP, which foster the exchange of communication between managers and their subordinates, where day-to-day situations, requests, incidents are dealt with…

Thanks to this philosophy, Solera has won several awards, including “Industrial Competitiveness Improvement Projects” awarded by IVACE (Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness).

These processes have fostered Solera's leap to Industry 4.0, making it easier to be truly in control as well as being able to monitor processes in its day-to-day activity, thus improving its results while, at the same time, making it more efficient and committed to its environment.