Production teams with new machines and solutions

Enabling growth

Mechanics Steve Podrasil and Steffen Kempe with Mihail Buzatu, Production Manager (from left to right) demonstrating the new yarn covering machine that is more effective and consumes less energy than older models.

Bauerfeind products are popular. So popular in fact that the increased demand from customers presents new challenges for Production and all associated areas. This also affects machinery. All production sites increasingly invest in new machines.

This year, Zeulenroda needed new knitting, sewing, dyeing, and injection-mold machines. To make space, teams removed various shelves that are now being accommodated by Berkemann, for example. Since the fall, two new machines have been in use in the Yarn Covering Department. To become more effective, colleagues are also managing to make a lot of things possible that previously seemed unimaginable: “We’re temporarily storing some assemblies externally until the end of the year. We also enlarged the spools on some machines,” explains Mihail Buzatu, Compression Stockings Production Manager. The effect: longer run times and less setup work. “These actions have allowed the Knitting Department to keep going.”

Gera needs knitting and sewing machines for the VenoTrain curaflow: “On some days, orders are 40% higher for this product compared to the previous year. We have to be able to handle these order peaks,” explains Lars Eulitz, Site Manager in Gera. During this year alone, 20 new sewing machines have been added. It is particularly important for custom-made products that these are available in time because nothing can be manufactured in advance.

Good job then that there is a positive trend in machine delivery times: “At some point, they were one year for some machines. Now it’s back to three to four months,” explains Marcel Sicheneder, Site Manager in Zeulenroda.

Four new presses have now been procured for foot orthosis manufacture in Remscheid. The plan is to add more in the coming year. The prototype of a machine that can press TRIactive blocks has also been “tested and considered good quality” as Jürgen Linnemann, Site Manager, reports: “We’re expecting significant improvements in efficiency and quality from the new machine process.”