Winterhalter provides commercial warewashing solutions to the food service and wider catering industries. Winterhalter was founded in 1947 in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. With over 1,000 employees worldwide, the owner-managed group of companies is a global player in the commercial kitchen industry. Other production sites have been opened in Endingen (Germany) and Rüthi (Switzerland). Winterhalter is represented by subsidiaries or partners in more than 70 countries worldwide. The great success of a new model of dishwasher resulted in bottlenecks in production at the Endingen plant. However, facility space was limited and the dishwashers needed to be produced with existing staff resources to increase cost-effectiveness. Winterhalter therefore decided to optimise the process. 

Implementation and challenge

MPS ARCHONIC worked together with Winterhalter to analyse the entire facility using Value Stream Mapping and develop a new production concept. ARCHONIC created a detailed 3D plan for each workplace and storage location so the planning could be translated into reality without modification. The result was order-based production and takt time assembly. After a short start-up phase output doubled with the same number of employees.