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

Number of issues on delivery of bikes to customer and number of service calls in the first month decreased by 50%. The organization structure has been adjusted and vacancies filled. Standards and work instructions have been recorded and trained. Additionaly a quality reporting system has been set up. All together this brought a strong foundation for further growth in volume and efficiency in the coming years.