Professor Daniel T. Jones (founder of the Lean Enterprise Academy, UK), the world-renown lean expert, states, "This book describes an important building block in designing responsive and adaptive systems to meet the challenges of the future." Peter Bebersdorf and Prof. Dr. Arnd Huchzermeier show how the Fendt tractor assembly plant in Marktoberdorf in Germany masters variance in mixed-model assembly with limitless product individualization. This way, companies can improve their supply chain resilience, sustainability metrics, and financial performance, leading to exceptional growth and customer satisfaction.
The book’s key message is that "the assembly of different and varied products in an assembly line in a fixed takt cannot represent a continuous flow of workload! When using variable takt, however, an even flow of workload for all employees in the assembly line is achieved almost automatically." In 2017, the Fendt factory was already recognized as a winner of the Industrial Excellence Award Germany and recently awarded Digital Lighthouse by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company.
This book presents two in-depth case studies, i.e., at AGCO Corporation and Canyon Bicycles GmbH. Alternative manufacturing approaches for coping with mixed-model assembly are also presented and benchmarked. Besides this book, a published case study on AGCO-Fendt's VarioTakt is freely available from INFORMS Transaction on Education. Furthermore, interested readers can find references to related publications on our website.
You can find the Springer book 'Variable Takt Principle' here:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-87170-3
You can find the published case article and case study here:
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/ited.2019.0224ca
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/ited.2019.0224cs
You can find additional published references related to the variable takt principle here:
https://www.whu.edu/de/fakultaet/supply-chain-management-group/production-management/forschung/ (See category: Variable Takt Principle)
You can find the Industrial Excellence Award here:
https://industrial-excellence-award.eu/home/