HIP 2006-2016
Happy Birthday, HIP!
Ten years ago, the “Hammer Innovations Programme” was launched at Kurtz – the beginning of a true success story. Inspired by discussions with Porsche Consulting on the introduction of the Toyota Production System Elements, a number of modules for safe-guarding the future were assembled. The aim: Kurtz Ersa uncovers wastefulness and trans-forms it into added value.
This was preceded by a staff survey with a very open discussion of what needed to be done. A readjustment was also necessary in order to meet customer requirements with regards to technical developments. The Kurtz Ersa Management therefore launched the “Hammer Innovation Programme” in brief “HIP”, on 1 April, 2006. The modules are:
Personnel development The personnel development concept contrib-utes to making staff fit for their tasks. The main focus is on the selection and deploy-ment of staff, management and further training.
Information All employees are informed on a monthly basis of turnover, result, quality, occupational safety and special occurrences such as major orders or the topic of the month.
Innovation Intensive training measures upgraded the methodological skills of our developers – making it possible to determine customer re-quirements more closely. This was supported with new computer-aided customer relations and idea management. Since then, there has been a binding development roadmap for each business sector.
Ongoing enhancement In order to ensure the constant improvement of the Kurtz Ersa Group, all staff members were motivated to contribute ideas through the HIP suggestion management scheme. In order to implement staff ideas and suggestions for improvements to the best possible extent, an additional net-work of contact partners for ideas and suggested improvements was installed. To date, over 2,500 suggestions have been submitted, for which a sum of over EUR 100,000 has been paid out in bonuses.
As a means of consistently avoiding wastefulness, the management initiated HIP projects – supervised by the HIP coaches project management. Over 300 workshops and projects have been held over the ten years – with a wealth of great results. For example, with the aid of the HIP coaches, smooth synchronised line production was developed and introduced at Ersa. Thanks to consistent further training, the HIP Team is always up to date, providing competent support among other things with the TPS principles, SIX Sigma and further coaching tools.
Staff profit sharing When many things in the company are generating unnecessary costs, they need to be attended to quickly and unbureaucratically. Generally these are things which each one of us can tackle, either individually or in a team with colleagues. The factors deciding on the level of profit sharing have intentionally been kept simple and transparent: turnover high – material usage low – staff costs low – capital commitment low – other costs low.