A new assembly line in Büchenbach

For our customers, our moving away from series production and focussing on customer order related production means that we can accommodate special requests even better than in the past and can equip appliances with options that provide additional benefits for our customers more quickly. But not only flexibility, but also the reduction in production costs was an aspect to be considered in order to produce competitively in Germany in the future.

In the context of the overall concept, the assembly line in Büchenbach was given a complete overhaul. At this central point in the manufacturing process, the housing parts from the sheet steel processing are “married” with heating technology and insulation, before they are assigned as basic versions in the basic versions storage. From there, the final assembly and shipment of Memmert standard products, such as heating oven, incubator and steriliser takes place, right after an order has been received. Flexibility is the key – also on the assembly line.

For every employee, a profile is stored in the production software which automatically sets the assembly area to the ideal height, matching the model and employee size. Hydraulic lifting devices simplify transport from A to B and the parts logistics also follow an intelligent logic that is precisely tuned to the requirements of flexible, small batch production. Kanban, the logistics principle known from car production, forms a part of the value stream optimised production at Memmert. This means that no fixed batch sizes are delivered to individual manufacturing stages, but always only the amount required at that particular time. 

With a net weight of nearly 160 kilos for a heating oven with a chamber volume of 749 litres, and even 50 kilos for a 500 model with a 108-litre chamber volume, assembly without any technical support would not only be exhausting for the employees, but also extremely strenuous for their joints and muscles. For this reason, the new assembly line in Büchenbach was designed according to the most recent findings in the field of ergonomics, so that potential risks to the health of employees can in future be ruled out entirely.