KTM X-BOW: The courage to have trust in partners
From zero to production launch in only 5 months.
Sleek, sporty, and innovative: that’s the KTM X-BOW, but that’s also the logistics behind the light-weight sports car.
These qualities were imperative right from the start to meet the challenge of building up a complete car production from scratch in just a couple of months. It only took five months from the kick-off of the project in an empty production hall in January 2008 to the launch of limited-series production in June.
Trust instead of hierarchies
The core team for planning the reusable transport packaging items needed for the project only comprised the head of logistics and his contact person at the enterprise KR-Porsiplast. Regular face-to-face meetings were held once or twice per week to clarify open questions and to give each other progress updates. Thus, mutual trust was emphasised instead of unnecessary hierarchies and inflexible decision-making processes. This approach also determined the criteria for selecting suppliers: since there was hardly any time for conducting tests, experiments, and negotiations, companies were chosen that had already proven to be reliable partners in previous projects.
Innovative, standardised, modular
Project head Franco Lanzoni, former logistics officer at Magna Steyr, for instance selected Schoeller Arca Systems as supplier of plastic containers due to positive experience with the company in earlier projects. The requirements for the transport packaging items were clear and simple: they had to be innovative, available in standard sizes, and designed for modular use. Schoeller Arca Systems, whose Austrian operations are headquartered in Wiener Neustadt, easily met these requirements and offered short delivery times, thus facilitating quick progress in the project.
Holistic container management and “talking” containers
In accordance with a holistic approach to container design and management, the project leaders sought to involve suppliers in the project as early on as possible and developed a simple and transparent container labelling system. “We are using ‘talking’ containers – the container labels are self-explanatory. No complicated codes or numbers, but a straightforward system that, for example, marries the respective part number directly to the corresponding container,” says KTM logistics chief Franco Lanzoni.
In the starting phase of the project, transport packaging items for 450 individual parts were planned. By now, the range of parts has grown to about 780 components provided by more than 120 different suppliers. At present, as many as 80% of the parts are already shipped in the right containers, which makes follow-up processes easier and saves waste-disposal costs for one-way paperboard packaging that might otherwise arise.
About four in five of the containers used come with inserts (such as box dividers, workpiece carriers, and textile inserts). Due to low item numbers and high-quality materials, conventional loose-fill packaging is rarely used.
In total, transport item planning and implementation only took four instead of the nine to twelve months that are usually required for these tasks in the industry. The courage to have trust in suppliers has been a key factor for the success of the project.
(more info on KTM X-BOW)
