Karl Mayer open Customer Support and Development Centre

KARL MAYER celebrated its 70th anniversary on 11 September and held a joint event to celebrate the opening of its Customer Support and Development Centre at the same time. As well as the Mayer family, invitations were extended to the company’s clients, suppliers and partners. The celebrations included a tour of the company, a gourmet lunch and a reception on the family’s own country estate, the ‘Eltviller Aue’. Roughly 800 guests were first of all welcomed on the lower floor of KARL MAYER’s new Innovation Centre, which had been festively decorated for the occasion.

In his speech, Fritz P. Mayer said that, ever since the company first came into existence, it had been adapting constantly to cater for the changing demands of the market. Dramatic regional shifts have been taking place over the last few years in particular. For example, China already accounts for 50% of KARL MAYER’s current turnover, whilst the rest of Asia ac-counts for a further 20%.

During a tour of the site, with stop-offs at three areas where the company has recently made considerable investments, illustrated the changes that had been introduced in Obertshausen in order to implement this new strategy.

The new Customer Support and Development Centre

The first stop on the tour of the company was KARL MAYER’s new Development Centre. Only through close interdisciplinary cooperation can KARL MAYER’s products be adapted to cater for constantly changing market conditions. This is the only way of developing new products and refining them to the point at which they are ready to be introduced onto the market.

The new Customer Support and Development Centre, with its modern equipment and well-thought-out layout, promotes networking between the various teams of experienced specialists and thus speeds up the entire development process. It also enables us to continue to make technological break-throughs,’ explained Fritz P. Mayer.

The building houses 200 workstations for employees and covers an area of 9,000 m2. 500 m2 is taken up with customer support, the offices account for 4,500 m2, and the rest is allocated to the test facilities and laboratories on the ground floor.

The new machining centre in the production department

The second stopping-off point in the company tour, the production section, where key areas of production expertise, optimised our processes in this respect, and ensured that our manufacturing and production machines are state-of-the-art,’ said Fritz P. Mayer. We have already invested roughly 40 million euros in the site in Obertshausen since 2005, and we intend to make further investments in the future.’

The production section currently takes up an area of 56,000 m2 and has 720 workers and 160 machine tools. One of the most modern machines, which was the focal point of the company tour, was the DMC 200 U.

The new Logistics Centre

The KARL MAYER Group can currently supply more than 120 types of machine for a variety of applications. Clients can also expect an efficient spare parts service. These functions can only be carried out by using an intelligent logistics system to handle the large number of components.

Despite a high level of standardisation between products, more than 100,000 product codes are used throughout the company as a whole, and more than 70,000 of these are spare parts. Since the end of last year, KARL MAYER’s new Logistics Centre – the third stopping-off point in the company tour – has been ensuring that the large number of items is arranged in a clear and logical order, and that they can be distributed quickly. The total area amounts to 4,350 m2 and houses the sections of ‘Order Picking, Dispatch and Administration’ (3,350 m2) and the ‘Warehouse’ (1,000 m2). The efficient, well-organised packing department has a maximum capacity of 25,000 items and 1,750 items can be received and dispatched every day. 15,700 items and 2,100 spare parts are currently in stock. All the spare parts that are held in stock can be dispatched within 24 hours. ‘Our new Logistics Centre is an excellent example of a state-of-the-art materials handling system,’ explained Fritz P. Mayer, the managing director. ‘In conjunction with SAP-based implementation and control of all the processes within the company, we can guarantee an optimum materials flow with the shortest possible delivery times. After all, the aim is to optimise the delivery chain for spare parts and to meet the requirements of the customer who is using the machine as far as possible,’ the managing director went on to say.