A company’s structure (also) influences the delivery time

Some of the key ingredients in the manufacturing business is efficiency and flexibility and those to components are often connected to the company’s structure and values.

The production of materials, when being produced in a bigger scale, can be seen as a very static and repetitive task and, obviously, there is some truth to that, as the very reason to why a company scales up the production of their products is so that they can sell the same product to more people.

But there are many elements to the process of scaling up your production.

First of all, you need to find a supplier that you can trust. Trust is build from many things. You need good communication and delivery on time all together with machines of the agreed quality. It can be difficult to find all these qualities in one company but is definitely possible.

A good quality in a company can be that they have a flat structure in their organisation. Sigma, an engineering factory in Denmark, has this as one of their core values. This makes sure that the distance between thought and action is very short, which can be very important if an order has to be re-arranged the last minute, or if a problem occurs in the proces. In other words, flexibility and efficiency can be found in companies where the way between the boss and the man on the floor is very short.

Another interesting element among the values at Sigma, that specializes in high technological machines and processing plants mainly in the food industry, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and the chemical industry, is that innovation is of great matter to them. Sometimes the development work is the main thing they work with meaning that along with the production, new experiments and thoughts are conducted.

The goal of the big investment and focus on innovation and development is that this gives the company the cutting edge to their competitors. It also provides a constant upgrade to their systems and products, which can be a great matter in the long run for their customers.

On the of the latest actions within Sigma’s innovation portfolio is 3D drawing, which their design & construction department work with on a daily basis. This means that they can design the products demanded down to every single little detail giving the clients a truly fulfilling experience.

Again, this comes down to innovation and new ways of thinking. In big companies with thousands and thousands of employees, the room for innovation might be smaller. Of course, many global companies have innovation departments, which only job is to try and think in new ways and doing things more efficiently that before. But by doing that, it can also exclude some ideas from the employees in the bottom of the company hierarchy, even though they might have great ideas, as they work with the products all the time. Therefore, a flat organization might be a bigger matter than you would think.