Excursie Nemag – 23 mei
loading…
Lunch lecture Mieloo & Alexander
On Thursday March 29th Mieloo & Alexander held a lunch lecture in association with Dispuut Transportkunde Pandora. The guest speaker was no other than Joseph Owusu, one of the founders of Mieloo & Alexander. Mieloo & Alexander is specialized in designing, planning and implementing technology solutions and aiming to transform companies to achieve operational excellence. During this very informative session, Mister Owusu showed the wide range of projects his company is involved in around Europe. He also showed the wide range of impressive companies Mieloo & Alexander is doing business with. Many of the projects involved AutoID, such as RFID technology, which could be used by clients to gain useful insights about their products. Using passive RFID chips Mieloo & Alexander were able to help Sony set up a system in warehouses in Germany with which prove of shipment for their products could be given, thus eliminating false claims of non-delivery. Another project involved active RFID technology with which the position of cars could be monitored at all times in a car storage area for import. So when a specific car needed to be moved to a customer, the position of this vehicle could be narrowly pinpointed from a huge car parking area. All in all it was a very informative and inspiring lunch lecture, which also functioned as an introduction to the company for the upcoming excursion with Mieloo & Alexander. For this excursion there was a maximum appliance of 15 persons. This limit was reached within 2 hours.
Inhousedag Accenture
On the 28th of March dispute Transportkunde Pandora organised an inhouse-day together with Accenture and in close collaboration with Dr. Beelaerts van Blokland from the TU Delft. After the bus arrived at the ITO tower we went up all the way to the 17th floor were we were welcomed by Rogier Toetenel and started the day with a cup of coffee and a short company introduction presentation. After the day’s program was explained we went on a site tour during which we explored the floors of the ITO tower that are occupied by Accenture. Our guides briefly explained about the working environment at Accenture and how the office works. Next, we started on the main activity of the day: the case. Every year Accenture organises a case that perfectly goes together with Beelaert’s class “Advanced Operation” and gives an insight in the process optimalisation techniques Accenture applies at its clients. Within three rounds of optimalisation alternated with some elaboration on the theory of process optimalisation we were able to increase performance of a fictional company significantly. It was so much fun to experience the effects of process optimalisation ourselves, and to compete against one another in two teams both representing a company. The was rounded of with a drink in the cantine. Unfortunately the weather didn’t allow us to enjoy the roof terrace and its view. At the end of this very exciting day at Accenture the students got a good idea of what Accenture does and what it would be like to work at the company. In December last year, Accenture also came to the TU to give a lunch lecture. If you haven’t already, you can read more about this following the link below: Accenture lunchlezing 04/12/2017
Guest lecture Krohne – 20 march 2018
In collaboration with Wouter Beelaerts we organized a guest lecture given by Pim Stam about the continuous improvement within Krohne Altometer. Pim is part of the Krohne Lean steering committee. It consists of 2 people working full time on improving the performance of the company. During the presentation Pim told us about the different techniques that the committee uses to, for instance, reduce waste. To put it simple, waste can be seen as any step in the process that does not add value to the product. Examples of waste are waiting, transportation, over-production, etc. Krohne did not implement these lean techniques overnight. They first started a few years back with Kaizen (first used by the Toyota Production System). The cycle of the Kaizen Activity can be defined as: “Plan -> Do -> Check -> Act”. The purpose of Kaizen is to humanize the workplace, eliminate overly hard work and teach people how to spot and eliminate waste in business process. The introduction of Kaizen had a positive effect and the board was convinced that lean techniques were of value. In time also Lean Six Sigma (introduced by Motorola in 1986 to compete with the Japanese Kaizen) and TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) were introduced. Next to these techniques, also Smart Industry or Industry 4.0 was shortly discussed. This new kind of industry involves around the automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. What is interesting to mention is that these techniques only work when everyone in the company is involved. Everybody has to be like-minded to make these changes work. This seems like something trivial, but is often the reason why implementations of new techniques fail. Pim solves this problem by communicating with the people on the work floor to find some of the biggest issues, he also has to convince the board that these changes will have a positive effect. Only after a “green light” given by the board, the committee can start to implement the changes. A couple of us have visited Krohne Altometer during the Germany trip, there we have seen in practice how it works. This guest lecture was the perfect opportunity for the ones that did not visit the company to see how these techniques are used in the industry.