Harting wins Manufacturing Excellence award

Harting Electronics has won the Manufacturing Excellence (MX) Award in the production competition’s information technology category with its highly effective deployment of state-of-the-art IT structures in production and supply chain management.

An intelligent customer relationship management (CRM) system and a universal enterprise resource planning (ERP) system are used to ensure optimal customer care, process transparency and the direct integration of support systems in production. The award also took account of the modern internal communications structures deployed for knowledge management.

“This award provides us with confirmation that we are on the right track in our pursuit of excellence. Winning the MX Award proves that we also occupy a pioneering role in the field of information technology,” remarked a delighted Torsten Ratzmann, Senior Vice President Production and Logistics at Harting.

Harting launched an internationally standardised IT system 10 years ago which ensures optimal error avoidance and process optimisation worldwide. “We call that providing consistency from customer to customer,” Torsten Ratzmann pointed out. The Harting learning and improvement system (HARlis) - a management system deployed to establish a problem-solving culture - was developed to implement the concept of a learning and integral company. The emphasis is placed on the employees, while state-of-the-art IT structures support them in creating the transparency required.

Projects and problems, for example, are discussed directly by production at daily staff meetings. Relevant information, such as product images, procedural instructions, areas of responsibility and deadlines, can easily be made available on site through intelligent IT-based tools. IT offers support here through leading-edge tools which provide direct access to SAP. All relevant information, such as areas of responsibility and deadlines, can be managed in one place and made accessible internationally. Any errors that may arise and possible solutions are also integrated here. Knowledge management is administrated via an in-house ‘Harting Wiki’. All employees can actively work on this digital, interactive documentation driving forward process optimisation. Dr Michael Baumeister, head of production at the Espelkamp site, said: “Our focus is on our employees. Highly efficient, automated processes in the background enhance employee capabilities in reacting quickly to reported target deviations, information or possible problems instead of having to deal with the IT systems themselves. Thanks to the universal, cutting-edge IT structure, staff only obtain the information actually required for their daily tasks.”

The MX Award has recognised best practice companies in production since 2005 under the maxim “identifying strengths - setting standards”. The objective is to recognise and promote innovative solutions and to make them universally available. The establishment of a network where best practice companies can present their solutions to other members therefore plays a key role.