Vaillant Group has won two accolades at the Best Factory Awards 2010. The annual awards, supported by the world renowned Cranfield School of Management, recognise businesses that seek to achieve the highest standards in manufacturing excellence.
Vaillant , which produces more than 400,000 boilers a year, won both the 'Best Engineering Plant Award' and the 'Energy & Environment Award' for 2010.
Dr Marek Szwejczewski, director of the Best Factory Awards, explained: 'Vaillant Group's UK manufacturing operation is extremely customer focused. The company makes good use of lean six sigma tools which involve employees in the development of improvements which significantly increased the factory's productivity and delivery performance. Employee multi-skilling is the norm at the factory, with flexibility which allows the plant to match labour to the peaks in customer demand.'
Also cited in the assessment is the on-going investment made by the company, including the £1 million investment in air testing of every appliance as part of its stringent quality control process; together with the innovative one-piece flow lines, and the adoption of 'poka yoke' principles which uses a barcode system that only allows an operator to progress to the next stage of production once the previous operations have been fully completed.