Automated production: Industry 4.0

We produce more than 2,500 pieces of furniture every day in our production plant in Melle. Our state-of-the-art production facilities guarantee the highest quality and up-to-the-minute timing here, as well as setting new standards in the office furniture industry.

Automation and digitalisation

Our company has developed out of a former village carpentry shop that was founded as the company headquarters in Melle-Westernhausen in 1939. And this is the location where one of the most modern office furniture production plants in Europe has developed over the last twenty years. The production processes have been continuously developed – from series production right through to an automated, fully digitalised and order-related production plant.

2000 Introduction of the Kaizen management system
2008 Full automation of the container unit production facility
2012 Putting the front panel production facility into operation
2015 Fully automated furniture production
2015 Paperless “pick by voice” order picking
2018 Fully automated Core assembly production plant 1
2019 Fully automated Core assembly production plant 2
2019 Introduction of the Shopfloor Management
2020 Improved desk assembly

Find out more

Continuous improvement of the production processes

The production process is virtually paperless, with the production progress called up on monitors and manageable online at any time. The order picking works on a “pick by voice” basis – a paperless process where communication between the picking system and the picker takes place through speech. This process has enabled us to increase our productivity by 20 per cent and reduce our error rate to almost zero per cent.

In addition, "pick-by-light" has been integrated into our work processes. In this process, employees are guided through the warehouse by illuminated lights when picking orders. There is also another future project concerned with driverless transport systems.

Even though our office furniture production plant is one of the most modern in Europe, we are constantly working on further improving production processes and procedures and continuing to be trailblazers in digitalisation. We use virtual reality software for the planning and further development of production work areas and processes.

This allows manufacturing and assembly workplaces to be portrayed quickly and easily by means of virtual reality headsets. These headsets make the paths, sequences of steps or positioning of materials palpable and visible. Si work procedures can tested straight away and adjustments can easily be made.

Interesting facts about our production plant: Manufacturing blog

The production plant is the heart of our company. Find out more about our state-of-the-art furniture production and how we our thinking about digitalisation and Industry 4.0 is developing.