Company

The company was founded 10 years ago and is fully dedicated to the manufacturing and sales of electric bikes. The company had grown strongly, but a solid base within Operations was missing (procurement, assembly, logistics, R&D, SHEQ).

Situation

The board asked us to professionalise the organisation and improve and sustain the quality performance of the company.

Approach

After a quick scan we initiated a program build-up of several projects, led by somebody from the company and supported by ourselves.

We have delivered the following:

• Established standards for assembling and checking the bikes, standardizing repairs and training people in these standards;
• Implemented a new layout for the assembly department, looking into material flows, safety, quality and productivity requirements;
• Professionalization of the organization looking into organizational design, meeting structure, innovation process and quality data management;
• Root cause analysis introduced to solve problems structurally;
• Improved the innovation process by connecting relevant departments, introducing a stage gate process and structured approach for product tests / pilot productions

Results

Quality standards are recorded and standardized in work instructions. The employees are trained to these standards and a quality reporting system has been set up so the employees are able to monitor the quality. All together this brought a strong foundation for further growth in volume and efficiency in the coming years.

Number of issues on delivery of bikes to customer and number of service calls in the first month decreased by 50%.

In addition, the organizational structure has been adjusted and various vacancies have been filled.