Dr. Stephan Mayer, TRUMPF GmbH & Co. KG, Lean Transfer Forum

Yes, so lean management plays a very, very big role for us. That's because TRUMPF is a family company and the family members themselves are still in operational leadership, so they are very responsible. And parts of the family themselves were in Japan for several years about 20 years ago and absorbed the whole lean topic and the philosophy behind it there, and then brought it back here. And the entire lean journey at our company actually began about 20 years ago, I would say. Initially very methodical, with the principles, as many others did, and now increasingly moving towards philosophy and cultural change. And because this is driven from the very top, by the owners themselves, it is very, very deeply anchored with us. Anchored. Yes, so certainly a major hurdle was ensuring employee enthusiasm. At the beginning, you have to move out of your comfort zone. Things are usually familiar, the processes are familiar. When you start and say we have to change something here, we want to do it differently now, perhaps even set ambitious goals, then you might initially put employees off. So you first have to create understanding, you have to show successes relatively quickly to bring people along. That was an obstacle at the beginning, gaining that trust. Later it became self-sustaining, I have to say. After the first successes, it was hardly questioned anymore. So that's one hurdle. A second hurdle is certainly the topic of lean sustainability. Because what always works is you do a project; people come in, consultants, external or internal, and they implement something, e.g., introduce a flow line. After three months it's over, the flow line runs, you've achieved 20% productivity, and then it all goes to sleep again. And to manage that the leadership team and the employees on site actually continue to drive and develop the topic after these initial projects, and especially react to constant changes themselves, that is certainly another very big challenge. Yes, Lean 2.0 is something, how you interpret it. There are different variants of what exactly it means. For us, it's about moving from a principles and methods approach – pull system, zero-defect principle, flow production, and so on – more towards a culture and behavior topic. That the employees and managers themselves continuously drive these changes and improvements, and not always just go through a project where top management changes something again, implements and introduces it in three months, and then it's over. So this change from top management push to employee pull is actually the change that we see in Lean 2.0. Yes, so I think the first important step is to define for yourself what lean is, what this production system is, what belongs to it, how you interpret it, what are the essential methods, principles, and ways of thinking. Once you have that, then it's about supplier management. I would start with suppliers. In the course of supplier management, when you are at the supplier, to look at and understand their production system, and then to teach them where there are optimization opportunities. You can also push that to some extent by, if you want to get price reductions from the supplier, then also providing them with ideas and saying, 'We expect, for example, a 3% price discount from you, but we will also help you realize that in your production.' That is the supplier side. We realize that on the one hand through a clearly defined philosophy that we convey to them, and on the other hand through a team of TRUMPF employees who go to the supplier when needed and drive that forward together with them. Yes, it is of course a great event. On the one hand, you get to know many other companies that are in similar situations, that have already started and are now looking at how to proceed, in which direction we are moving. You can address your own questions, your own problems in implementation and thought processes, get feedback on how others do it. You also get a bit of the state-of-the-art thinking on the whole topic brought closer, which helps a lot. So all in all, I think it's a great event to take another step forward.