Brose A Comprehensive Approach to Innovation (2. strana)

REGION–KOPŘIVNICE A Comprehensive Approach to Innovation The family-owned company Brose is the fourth-largest automotive supplier in the world. Every second newly produced vehicle in the world carries at least one product made by Brose. The editors of Positiv magazine bring you an interview with CEO Niclas Pfüller on the topic of the need to innovate business processes. Dear general director, what are the current business and production goals of Brose? We expect to be, at the end of November, at the same level as last year or even better. Maybe for some people that sounds strange; everybody is talking about the crisis, but at this moment, basically since September, we are back and higher than what we produced one year ago. That’s what it looks like right now. I am keeping my fingers crossed that will be what we’ll see at least over the next couple of weeks until the end of the year. There is, however, surely more uncertainty in the future than in the past. So, despite the coronavirus, is it a success? We have seen, like everybody, dramatic and very bad months--April, May, June--with really low sales and the crisis for us. But our business came back quicker than others and, as I said, since September, we’ve been at or above last year’s level. Even compared to our projections, we just have a very small deviation from it. Have you taken any steps in the field of innovation this year? Yes, we have taken steps this year to continue to improve and innovate our company. Let me just mention three examples. At the beginning of 2020, and during the coronavirus crisis, we invested and installed a new digital production platform which we will roll out worldwide. We are a pilot factory which helps to develop and later roll out this new and more efficient system. Our Brose Production Platform, called PRIME, contains a significant investment in digital tools linking machines on the production shop floor with workers and our technicians in the offices, ensuring higher efficiency. Finally, we will be a completely paperless factory, able to measure our performance and react to changes much faster. Secondly, we have just launched a new innovative side-door latch at our Rožnov plant. It is the lightest and smallest latch we have ever produced. We have delivered it to several big automotive manufacturers in Europe. Production started off very well, and also even during the corona crisis: we basically went from 2,000 units per month to 40,000 to 60,000 units per week now, so it was a very good newproduct launch. And maybe I can mention one more thing: we are always trying to improve the operational environment for our employees. During the first half of 2020, we started installing a new machine concept. It will handle heavy seat structures and there will be a camera to check for zero defects. So far, we have not been able to automate production of this type of very heavy seat. But we made a new concept. It is 68 ǀ POSITIV 4/2020 being installed and is going live as we speak. It ensures that workers have better ergonomic workplaces and the heavy work is done by robots. In addition, the Vision System ensures that the visual quality control is 100% reliable and ensures best customer satisfaction. As Brose, we want to continue to invest during the crisis, to be innovative and come out stronger after the crisis. This is what we do in line with our slogan #brosestehtnichtstill (Brose does not stand still). How is Brose, as an employer, beneficial for the Kopřivnice region? In the Top Employers Czech Republic 2020, you placed among the fifteen winners. We started the Top Employers Certification actually not only to get an award or win a prize. We wanted to get a benchmark with other companies, important employers, not only in the Czech Republic, but basically worldwide.