HOLISTIC SOLUTION CONCEPTS FOR THE FURNITURE PRODUCTION


The new IMA Schelling Group INDUSTRIAL CONSULTING division supports existing and new customers with the development and realization of manufacturing strategies for their furniture productions.

"We want to give our customers the best possible support before the actual investment decision is made and make things clear in a market situation that is getting more and more complex,” explains Holger Blötscher, Senior Consultant of Industrial Consulting, to sum up the task of the new division of the IMA Schelling Group.

The challenges of Industry 4.0 and increased digitization in mechanical engineering are also revolutionizing the furniture industry. The market is going through a process of transformation. The size and complexity of the projects are continuously increasing. Hence, when new projects are planned, the parties involved in the project need to see the bigger picture. The approach of Industrial Consulting is to promote the development of the customer company and to offer them structured assistance with investment planning and factory optimization along the whole process chain. The focus here is on the topics of digitization, automation and advanced planning systems.

MAXIMUM OBJECTIVITY IS ENSURED

During the period of cooperation among the companies working on a project, early integration of the customer into planning is a basic assumption for successfully bringing the projects into being. The experts create customer-specific concepts for factory equipment and software and provide help in preparing and securing the investment decision. To do so, they collaborate with their customers by determining – whenever it makes sense – the appropriate level of batch production or custom fabrication and offering assistance with all tasks to be accomplished within the project. In this process the Consulting experts give advice with maximum objectivity, considering all solutions currently available on the market. "Of course, as a business unit of the IMA Schelling Group, we are not totally independent. But the people who work in the company have long-year experience in the industry and the highest level of competence in order to be able to comprehensively advise customers at process level and to compare the different manufacturing methods and philosophies without prejudice. In the end, it is the customer who makes the final decision for a specific technology and for the machine or manufacturing system resulting from this”, says Holger Blötscher.


DECENTRALIZED ORGANIZATION AND CUSTOMER PROXIMITY

The organization structure of the Industrial Consulting division is decentralized. "We want to be as close as possible to the markets and customers and a priori exclude language barriers and intercultural miscommunication,” explains Holger Blötscher. Moreover the conditions can be individually tailored to meet local requirements. Today the Industrial Consulting team is working successfully in global projects, for example in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Spain, South-East Asia and China. This has already resulted in long-lasting cooperation with a number of customers – some of which are new customers. And the consulting business division is on the rise. However, it acts according to the motto: “Quality over quantity – after all, we want to meet the great demands placed on the IMA Schelling Group as a technology leader”.

SOLUTION - THE FUTURE MAGAZINE


Back to the magazine