Business Opportunity
With copper prices highly volatile, and oscillating between $6,000 and $10,000 / ton, and with added values seldom above 5% of copper costs, reducing stocks, reducing scrap and increasing the metal yield becomes a priority. The company launched an initiative to reduce work in progress inventories across its 15 European plants, with a 30% reduction target.
Approach
Kairos Management worked closely with the company, mapping and analysing value streams across plants, performing benchmarks, training specialists on Lean principles and tools, and facilitating focussed improvement projects and kaizen events to improve flow and pull, and reduce lead times.
Results
Inventories were reduced by 30% across the board. In specific areas of focus, inventories were drastically reduced from up to 5 to 1 days.
