To whom it may concern,

 

Prefaco Houthalen and Lommel are part of the international organization CRH. CRH is a listed organization, where approximately 70,000 employees in 35 countries work together on a turnover of more than € 17 billion. Within the Products Belgium division, Prefaco Houthalen and Lommel are 2 production sites. We believed that efficiency could be improved in both production plants and in both drawing departments. We have chosen Vocum as an external partner to achieve these goals. At the start of the collaboration with Vocum, 280 FTEs were active in production, maintenance and the drawing rooms.

During an analysis, Vocum determined that a potential saving of € 2,375,046 was possible on the above-mentioned scope. This corresponds to a productivity improvement of more than 20%.

The project team, led by Christophe Holthof, has achieved a good result thanks to a number of structural changes. We have summarized the most important ones again:

There was insufficient focus on efficiency in production and the drawing rooms. By determining the right KPIs and managing accordingly, this focus and efficiency have been increased by 20%
A complete management system has been developed so that problems/deviations compared to the target are noticed in a timely manner. This allows actions to be taken at the right time and at the right level.
A production schedule has been created, which allows the plant managers to determine several days in advance how many people are needed for the planned work. With this information they are also better able to motivate and confront their department leaders.
Intensive training has been given both in the classroom and “on the job” with the aim of improving the ability of managers to manage a group of people based on: facts and numbers. The managers in this story are the plant managers, department heads and sergeants.
The two drawing departments in Houthalen and Lommel have been centralized into one department in Houthalen. This allowed the work to be planned better and the people to be better managed. In addition, drawing errors are better managed and productivity has increased by 15%.
By focusing more on overtime, these have fallen by 30%.
Daily planning has been implemented in the maintenance department with the aim of enabling better transparency and follow-up of maintenance tasks.
The training needs were identified. Based on A training plan has been developed for this, which has increased the flexibility of employees. Replacements were also appointed and trained for the manager.
Communication between the different departments and levels has been improved through the use of the new management system.

The above points and continuous guidance from the Vocum team enabled us to achieve the target of € 2,375,046, or 20% productivity increase, on an annual basis. This corresponds to an R.O.I. of 3.6:1.

We are very pleased with the way in which Vocum brought the project to a successful conclusion and recommend Vocum to any company that has a change process in mind with measurable results. Partly because of this result, we have decided to have a new analysis carried out in 2 other production sites together with Vocum.

 

Yours faithfully,

Stefan van Buggenhout / General Manager

Theo Smeets / Operational director