Industrial Fabrication & Automation
Delivered, Cut, Stored Handling Steps & Inventory Reduced by Half "What we see here was not long ago distributed across several halls on our site", explains Heinz Weitner, CEO of Werner Weitner GmbH, with visible pride during a tour through the company's new production and storage hall. Everything is bright, tidy, clean and relatively calm – a pleasant working atmosphere. The hall is the gem of the "Weitner Engineering World" – expresses the specialist for mechanical engineering and workshop equipment when referring to its headquarters in Eichstätt, located in Upper Bavaria. Founded in 1968 as a metal fabrication business, Werner Weitner has become a sought-after partner in the automobile industry and medical technology. With around 250 employees, the company manufactures primarily special tools that are used, for instance, in authorized workshops for numerous automobile manufacturers.
Organic Growth Requires Logistics To achieve this, Werner Weitner always relies on an extensive pool of machinery. However, due to spatial conditions, the machinery was located up until now in different surrounding buildings. "We grew organically and
20 | IMD
FEBRUARY 2022
expanded our capacities gradually." Heinz Weitner reported. It became more and more of a logistical challenge: "The effort needed to transport the required parts and materials back and forth between the individual process steps became very cumbersome over time." As a result, the company decided to centralize most of its process chain into a hall specially designed for this purpose. The manufacturing engineer primarily processes steel and various alloys in its production plant; however, it also works with aluminum and resins. Its portfolio ranges from prototype manufacturing through to large-scale series.