Jowat

Manufacturing industrial adhesives is a complex process that requires high volumes of specialized chemicals and a tremendous amount of power. With raw materials and energy costs skyrocketing, premium adhesive manufacturer Jowat looked to get an even tighter grip on its inventory management and production processes.

To ensure maximum efficiency, Jowat factories receive raw materials when they are ready to use them and no earlier. Working in this way enables Jowat to ensure that it always has enough raw materials to fulfil orders, while also minimizing waste and inventory storage costs. However, this operating model demands smooth workflows, and any delays in order placement, production, or the delivery of raw materials can have huge cost implications for Jowat.

As a result, the company works hard to ensure that its 24/7 manufacturing processes always run like clockwork. With demand for industrial adhesives surging, the company was eager to ensure that its production processes could scale to meet ballooning order numbers and still deliver optimum efficiency.

Originally established in 1919, Jowat is no stranger to innovation. Leaders at Jowat identified that the next stage of the company’s evolution would require a radical transformation of its production and inventory management processes.

“Our factory workers still relied heavily on paper-based processes,” explains Dirk-Alexander Segger, Detmold Plant Manager at Jowat. “For instance, when employees had finished mixing and decanting adhesives, they handwrote notes to track the volume and type of raw materials that they used during the process. Shortly after decanting, workers would then input the information from their notes into our inventory management and manufacturing execution systems – adding to their workload and increasing the risk of errors.”

Tracking materials usage manually inevitably created a time-delay and discrepancies between the stock amounts recorded in Jowat’s inventory system and the actual volume of raw materials available on the factory floor. What’s more, with information stored across multiple systems and in different formats, plant managers had no clear way to identify process bottlenecks or potential enhancements.

Annette Podleschny-Borchardt, Project Manager at Jowat, comments: “To enhance efficiency, improve transparency, and prepare for growth, we decided it was time to go entirely paperless. Building digital processes would give us a more detailed, up-to-date picture of our stock position, which would, in turn, help to drive smarter raw materials purchasing decisions as well as production improvements.”