Mr. Slomp, you joined us as Managing Director for Tech­nology & Devel­op­ment about two years ago. Which areas were most in need of your atten­tion at the time?

Let us perhaps start with an aspect that was defi­nitely not in need of atten­tion. I knew from day one that Uhlmann is a company full of experts with a high level of knowl­edge. I could see no neces­sity for improve­ment in that respect. What I did quickly recog­nize was that my work should focus on chan­neling this exper­tise – in other words, making the most effec­tive use of the avail­able skills. In some instances, things were done as they had always been done. Many struc­tures had estab­lished them­selves. I wanted to sharpen aware­ness and turn people into system­atic problem solvers.   

That means that you came from outside and said that people had, to some extent, been dealing with the wrong things. Did you encounter resis­tance?

On the contrary! That is what I came to like about the Uhlmann culture from the start: Everyone wants to change for the better. Employees set to work open-mind­edly when I intro­duced a new method­ology to improve our quality – a key step toward become system­atic problem solvers. Lean Six Sigma is turning our employees into true waste detec­tors.

This is a major invest­ment for the company and, of course, for the employees. However, we have struck the right chord: We mean­while have over 100 employees in the company qual­i­fied to one of the certi­fi­ca­tion levels.

What impact is this newly gained knowl­edge having?

As an example, I am partic­u­larly proud of the project of one employee. He focused on the order control depart­ment where all incoming orders are managed. We regu­larly had to contend with bottle­necks there, but were unable to explain them. The colleague studied the figures over some weeks and noticed that most of the orders were entered into the system on Fridays when everyone tries to clear their desk before the weekend. This simple fact led to a buildup and caused prob­lems along the entire supply chain. Totally plau­sible, but it would never have been noticed if no-one had taken the time to look closely. We are currently adapting the process so that these bottle­necks no longer occur.

Have you improved our quality using other means of adjust­ment aside from this new aware­ness?

Two other topics have been addressed: the prod­ucts them­selves and the processes. Taking a closer look has also helped product quality. For the first time, we are system­at­i­cally listing which types of complaint are received partic­u­larly often. This enabled us to look into the top five problem causes, which include the sealing roller and the product loader, both of which did not func­tion as they should. We have signif­i­cantly revised these. The new modules are now being used in the latest machines and will cause us fewer headaches in the future.

And where were the weak points in terms of processes?

We concen­trated here on our coop­er­a­tion with suppliers. For a long time, as a typical mid-sized company, we have natu­rally managed this differ­ently to a major auto­mo­tive group – more casu­ally. For our quality stan­dards, however, it is crucial that we system­at­i­cally review and audit our suppliers. We are doing that now. Further­more, we are working on revising our incoming goods proce­dure and have strength­ened our depart­ment for tech­nical quality manage­ment.

These are all tasks that mainly concern the prod­ucts we currently manu­fac­ture. You are also respon­sible for devel­op­ment. What have you changed there?

The big ques­tion is always: What, essen­tially, should we develop? We have initi­ated many things recently that enable us to keep an eye on the needs of the market. If we are aware of the aches and pains of our customers, we can aim at relieving these. Uhlmann has always carried out research and devel­op­ment of its own accord. That was one of the strengths of the company before my time, its life insur­ance, so to speak. Due to that, we will continue to be on the ball when new issues emerge.

Is digi­tal­iza­tion one of these new issues?

Yes and no. The term digi­tal­iza­tion does not really capture what is currently taking place in industry. Uhlmann has been digital for a long time. Many of us sit in front of a computer, we develop our machines in digital space, and they have many digital func­tions. New is the networking. It is now neces­sary for our machines to commu­ni­cate with each other, or they must be able to under­stand the SAP soft­ware with which the user works. We must learn how to handle issues such as big data. However, this is not anything our devel­opers need to fear. They happily apply them­selves to new topics. We have over 100 soft­ware engi­neers in the mean­time, which means that we are well posi­tioned.

We will always need the people
who uphold our corpo­rate vision.

You say that we are already well versed in digital work – what will never­the­less change?

Proce­dures such as order processing are pretty much old school – not only in our case. A lot is done on paper. That must change to improve our effi­ciency. Our produc­tion processes must also be digi­tal­ized to a greater extent to speed us up. Nobody must worry about his or her job when we say that we are working on digi­tal­iza­tion. Clearly, we are under­going many changes, but we will always need the people who uphold our corpo­rate vision.

What is the content of this corpo­rate vision?

Our work in Germany will become even more customized. We are already absolute experts in supplying tailored solu­tions and we will continue to score in this respect. In our sector, only we with our excel­lent German engi­neering quality are able to do this – I am allowed to acknowl­edge this as a Dutchman. The compe­ti­tion is not on a par with us here. We also want to market our services more strongly as prod­ucts. Handled skill­fully, it is actu­ally possible to sell a machine twice by providing services. And our stan­dard machine busi­ness must focus more inten­sively on customer needs. We must lay greater emphasis on modular design. We need versa­tile modular compo­nents, from which we can quickly assemble the solu­tions required by our customers. That has many bene­fits. We can supply more swiftly and at a more attrac­tive price, and never­the­less earn well.

Finally, let us talk about you. What does Tim Slomp do when he is not dealing with inno­va­tion, quality, or digi­tal­iza­tion?

Privately, I like to be above the clouds. I have a private pilot certifi­cate and I am very active on a volun­tary basis. I am the chairman of an avia­tion club in the Allgäu region, through which I orga­nize attrac­tive excur­sions. We recently flew to Athens in small airplanes. Both profes­sion­ally and privately, I like to have a bird’s-eye view and to under­take jour­neys with people.