Since 2019, Torsten Ratzmann has strengthened the egeplast management team and has since been highly valued not only professionally, but also personally. With a good mix of drive and tact, he introduced a successful new lean strategy with the internal ImPROVe programme, on the basis of which egeplast was able to win the coveted category award for “Outstanding Series Production” at the renowned “Factory of the Year” competition last year. A great success and a good occasion for an interview with Torsten Ratzmann, egeplast Managing Director for Operations and Innovation.
You joined egeplast in 2019 and have changed quite a lot since then. What were the first or most important optimisation potentials you identified?
“Based on my professional experience in production, I was able to identify optimisation potential with a fresh perspective. However, the real challenge was not so much recognising optimisation potential, but rather bringing employees along in such a way that they also support the need for change. You can read up on methods and specialist knowledge and learn them more or less easily. But convincing an employee to leave behind old work processes that may have been practised for years or decades and to embrace new approaches is the real core of such a project.”
“I think that at the beginning there definitely has to be a certain sensitivity to the underlying issue. You also have to be willing to pick up the team accordingly. Last but not least, you have to be able to rely on good managers who will also go down this path with you.
In the past, lean or automation was often associated with job cuts; in my view, that is one of the biggest mistakes that was made in the early days of implementation. Because it is not about cutting jobs. Instead, good lean management provides employees with structures, methods, processes, etc. that enable them to work better, faster and more easily. The moment the team recognises this, each individual pulls together better so that, in essence, you can get more out of the operation with the same resources, including the same number of employees. This way, everyone can work better—hopefully even more easily—while increasing output at the same time. That is my basic understanding and my guiding idea when it comes to lean, and I have apparently communicated it successfully to the team.”
In your view, is that also the reason why egeplast received the Factory of the Year award?
“That was certainly an important factor. I have said it many times and I am happy to emphasise it again: No individual can win this award; it only works when an entire team works well together, inspires each other and jointly has the discipline to drive change forward. I am in the fortunate position of being able to say: I found a team that was not only willing to embrace new things, but also to consistently maintain changes over the long term. The key drivers were Dr.-Ing. Isabell Fiebig, Dr.-Ing. Tobias Hallmann and Michael Büser.”
How important was participating in the Factory of the Year competition in day-to-day work? Or to put it another way: How present was the goal of winning the category–award?
“I am convinced that a shared goal motivates and drives people. That is why we integrated a category win at Factory of the Year into our strategy early on and defined it as a concrete goal. We kept this clear goal—communicated transparently and measurable in concrete terms using the KPIs defined for the competition—constantly in view. This gave us, so to speak, the foundation on which we achieved corresponding optimisation in many areas.
By repeatedly reviewing and analysing the KPIs for the competition, we were able to achieve improvements for the company in a great many respects. Specifically, I mean processes, workflows, or topics such as a good understanding of our production and products. Last but not least, this also includes the fact that employees in production have developed a new kind of awareness for precisely these points.”
You make it sound plausible and simple. Was it? Can you name the biggest hurdle?
“If it were easy, anyone could do it! Especially since, as a mid-sized company, we are faced with certain restrictions in terms of resources,, one of the big questions for us was: How do we set this up in parallel with day-to-day business? Creating capacity, or more accurately ‘clearing it out’, was certainly one of the right and important decisions, but in implementation it was all the more challenging.. That we succeeded in this first fundamental step was however in my view the basis for the overall success.. In turn, our size then in a way helped us again. Because as a mid-sized company you also have advantages, such as shorter and faster decision-making paths, but in our case also a more personal way of working together, a very strong sense of cohesion and, in the end, a consistent focus on working towards a shared goal.”
Congratulations once again on the award. What’s next?
“Let me put it this way: The concept of choosing a certain metric as a strategic benchmark has definitely worked for us. That is why I see us continuing with this successful idea. Which trophy we will set our sights on next has not yet been decided, but I do have a few in mind. What is important to me is to find a competition that also goes hand in hand with the next level of professionalisation for us. By that I mean that we will not take part somewhere solely with the aim of winning an award; the ultimate goal should always be further development of the company. In any case, I look to the future very optimistically and I am absolutely certain that egeplast will continue to win awards when it takes part in competitions.”
