New Mercedes-Benz Consolidation Center opens in Speyer
 Mercedes-Benz Consolidation Center Speyer, Germany: Packing station |
- Next step in the strategic realignment of Mercedes-Benz Cars focuses on worldwide logistics – central responsibility for efficient and flexible management
- Several hundred million euros to be invested over the next years in the strategic realignment of logistics operations
- New Consolidation Center in Speyer is an exemplary strategic investment
- Markus Schäfer, member of the Divisional Board of Mercedes-Benz Cars, Production and Supply Chain Management: “Logistics plays a key role for our company’s success. Our objective is to gear our Supply Chain Management organization towards growth and to make it even more efficient and flexible. This approach marks the next logical step in our global production strategy.”
- Alexander Koesling, Head of Supply Chain Management at Mercedes-Benz Cars: “We create the necessary conditions for on-time production at our plants. Our investment of several hundred million euros in our Supply Chain Management organization will optimize logistics throughout our global production networks. By reducing our logistics costs per vehicle we will improve our competitiveness, since logistics have a major impact on our overall cost position.”
STUTTGART/SPEYER, GERMANY -- July 17, 2015: The Mercedes-Benz Cars division is taking the next
step in its strategic realignment process by investing a high three digits
million amount in its global logistics organization. In line with the
“Mercedes-Benz 2020” growth strategy, Mercedes-Benz Cars is
expanding its global production and supplier network close to customers and
markets. The increasingly complex incoming production material flows at
Mercedes-Benz plants and the transport of newly manufactured vehicles from
production facilities will be centrally managed in an even more efficient
and flexible manner. “Logistics plays a key role for our
company’s success. Our objective is to gear our Supply Chain
Management organization towards growth and to make it even more efficient
and flexible. This approach marks the next logical step in our global
production strategy,” says Markus Schäfer, member of the Divisional
Board of Mercedes-Benz Cars, Production and Supply Chain Management. The
focus will be on securing the supply of materials in the global production
networks, reducing inventories, ensuring on-time deliveries of new vehicles
to customers around the world, and incorporating the logistics organization
into the continuous advancement of the global production network at an
early stage.
The new strategic approach for the
Supply Chain Management organization was presented on the occasion of the
grand opening of the new Mercedes-Benz Consolidation Center in Speyer in
the Southwest of Germany. Such consolidation centers play an important role
in Mercedes-Benz Cars’ logistics strategy in terms of ensuring the
supply of materials used at the division’s plants around the world.
The opening ceremony of the new center was attended by the Premier of
Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer, and around 200 other guests from
politics, industry, and administration.
The
global Supply Chain Management unit has been integrated into the central
production organization at Mercedes-Benz Cars (MO). It reports directly to
Divisional Board member Markus Schäfer and is managed by Alexander
Koesling, Head of Supply Chain Management at Mercedes-Benz Cars. The
unit’s responsibilities include
planning and managing the global production
program,
ensuring the production
capability of Mercedes-Benz Cars locations through the delivery of required
materials - including on-time deliveries of supplied parts and
components from suppliers and MBC facilities to the target plants (inbound
logistics),
securing the supply of
materials and material flows to the stations where the parts and components
are installed within Mercedes-Benz Cars vehicle and powertrain plants
(intralogistics),
and managing the
global transport of new vehicles from manufacturing plants to customers
around the world (outbound logistics).
In
terms of inbound logistics the planned increase of unit
volumes at Mercedes-Benz Cars will lead to a significant expansion of
merchandise flows throughout the global production network, especially at
plants outside of Germany. The increasing product complexity resulting from
a larger number of engine versions and personal customization options, for
example, are putting an additional strain on logistics operations. The new
Consolidation Center in Speyer represents a perfect example of a strategic
investment in a new facility operated by highly specialized logistics
service providers. These providers will consolidate supplier shipments in
an optimal manner to ensure deliveries to the three major Mercedes-Benz
Cars plants abroad - in China, the U.S., and South Africa. The setup
of similar consolidation centers in the upcoming years is being considered,
especially in growth regions like China and NAFTA. This new strategic
approach is a result of the growing demand for local suppliers in these
regions and the increasingly strategic employment of regional suppliers for
global deliveries of production materials.
Measures related to intralogistics focus
on the intelligent optimization of material flows in production
plants - from material deliveries to component installation in
vehicles. Such optimization begins at an early stage with logistics and
load carrier planning, which have a major impact on inbound logistics
freight costs. The continual modularization and standardization of
production processes is accompanied by the use of state-of-the-art digital
transformation approaches resulting from Industry 4.0. These include
wireless real time monitoring of materials and empty packaging, support
from big data cockpits for the planning, monitoring and control of
processes, and largely automated driverless transport systems. The
Mercedes-Benz plant in Kecskemét, Hungary, for example, is currently
implementing a pioneering project in which materials used in the final
assembly area are exclusively brought to the line in prepackaged baskets by
driverless transportation systems (DTSs). This not only eliminates the need
for workers to go get the materials themselves: A look into the baskets is
sufficient to determine if all components have been installed - yet
another simple and effective way to improve quality assurance.
Activities in the area of outbound
logistics revolve around the realignment of the global transport
network in order to prepare it for the significant increase in unit volumes
at plants around the world, and thus ensure the flexible, damage-free, and
efficient delivery of vehicles to customers everywhere. A key strategic
project in this area was recently given the green light. It involves the
construction of a new network hub at a port in the Adriatic Sea that will
be used to ship vehicles to Asia. Other measures include the systematic use
and further development of a reference calculation method for the
allocation of transportation services, much in the same way this has been
done successfully with production material procurement.
About the Mercedes-Benz Consolidation Center in
Speyer
The new Consolidation Center in
Speyer consolidates production materials from European suppliers and
initiates the transportation to the major car production plants operated
abroad by Mercedes-Benz in China, the U.S., and South Africa. A total of
approximately 90 million euros was invested in the facility, which is now
being gradually brought up to full capacity. When it becomes fully
operational in 2016, the center will ship several hundred sea containers
every week via inland waterways or rail to Antwerp and Bremerhaven, where
they will be loaded onto freighters and transported to Beijing (China),
Tuscaloosa (U.S.), and East London (South Africa).
Up until now, logistics service providers in Bremen were
solely responsible for managing shipments of materials from German and
European suppliers to the major Mercedes-Benz plants abroad. Thanks to the
new consolidation center in southwestern Germany, deliveries from European
suppliers south of the Main River will no longer have to be shipped over
long distances, which will significantly reduce the logistics costs. This,
along with the direct links between the center and the ports via inland
waterways and rail lines, will lower relevant CO2 emissions by more than 25
percent. After intense examination, Daimler chose Speyer for the new center
because of the available space and the geographic location.
The Consolidation Center Speyer was planned according to
the requirements of Mercedes-Benz Cars and designed in a way that ensures
all processes can be carried out very efficiently and safely - for
example, by keeping pedestrians, trucks, and reach stackers (vehicles for
loading and unloading containers) separate from one another. The center,
which is located at a site with a total area of 251,000 square meters,
extends over a distance of one kilometer and has around 79,000 square
meters of hall space. In addition, the center includes a roughly
21,000-square meter container yard and an administrative
building.
A team from Mercedes-Benz Cars Supply
Chain Management is responsible for the overall operation of the facility.
The operational logistics at the Consolidation Center - the
transshipment of supplier materials from trucks to containers - is
managed by the global logistics company syncreon, which employs around 400
people in its onsite operational material transshipment and administrative
units. The specialist transport company Contargo, in turn, is responsible
for transferring sea containers to trucks and then transporting the
containers to inland waterway or rail transshipment centers.
About Mercedes-Benz Cars Operations
Mercedes-Benz Cars Operations is
responsible for passenger car production at 26 locations around the world
as part of a flexible and efficient production network involving more than
70,000 employees. This includes the central functions of planning,
logistics, and quality. Mercedes-Benz Cars produced more than 1,754,000
Mercedes-Benz and smart passenger cars last year, marking the fourth record
in a row.
The network is based on the product
architectures of front-wheel drive (compact cars) and rear-wheel drive (for
example the S-Class, E-Class, and C-Class) as well as the SUV and sports
car architectures. In addition, there is a powertrain production network
(engines, transmissions, axles and components). Each of these production
networks is grouped around a lead plant that serves as a center of
competence for the ramp-up of new products, technology and quality
assurance.
The focus of day-to-day work is on
the continuous improvement and refinement of state-of-the-art production
methods, which allow future high-tech vehicles to be produced in a way that
is efficient, flexible and environmentally friendly, according to the
typical Mercedes-Benz quality standards. All of this revolves around the
employees and their expertise, whose work is systematically supported by
ergonomic workplace design and intelligent automation. In addition to its
own production plants, Mercedes-Benz is increasingly leveraging
partnerships and utilizing capacities at contract manufacturers as part of
its growth strategy.