Ground-breaking ceremony for new Materials Management Center

• Tognum Group optimizes parts supply for production
• In full swing by mid-2012  

Friedrichshafen, 5 August 2010. Tognum, the specialist for propulsion and power solutions is today holding a symbolic ground-breaking ceremony in Kluftern near Friedrichshafen to mark the start of construction work on its future ‘Materials Management Center’ (MMC) for its subsidiary mtu. The new facility is scheduled to begin supplying components and assemblies to the Friedrichshafen plants as well as other locations in the company’s global production network from mid-2012. Investment in the project totals around €47 million.
“From the middle of 2012 at the latest, centralized materials management will significantly enhance production efficiency at the Friedrichshafen location,” said Dr. Ulrich Dohle, Tognum Executive Board member with responsibility for Technology & Operations, on the occasion of the ground-breaking ceremony. The MMC will replace several other off-site warehousing facilities which have so far been used to operate the parts supply system.
In future, the MMC will take delivery of in-house parts as well as components manufactured by suppliers. Incoming goods will be put into storage, and in some cases pre-assembled into sub-units, before being delivered to the assembly lines ready for installation. The new system will considerably simplify the complex process of bringing together components from different warehouses. It will avoid transport vehicles making empty runs and it will reduce material inventories and logistics costs. A possible second construction phase has also been envisaged to cover the transport of large components and finished engines.
The construction of the MMC forms part of the expansion of the Tognum Group’s global production network     a major element in the implementation of its corporate strategy. Also currently under development is a further new assembly and production facility in Aiken, in the US state of South Carolina. This location, for the North American market, will commence operations this fall. In Asia, the Tognum Group is setting up a development location in the Indian city of Pune, among other places, whilst the Suzhou facility in China is being extended by the introduction of an assembly line for distributed energy plants. A production line for cylinder liners has also recently gone into operation in Istanbul, Turkey. In future, several production locations, such as the facility in Suzhou, will be receiving the parts they need from the MMC in Kluftern.
Intensive negotiations and comprehensive studies of alternative construction sites took place before construction was able to get underway. After the town of Friedrichshafen had offered the Tognum Group the Kluftern site in 2008, the local administrative authorities took the project through to the building phase within two years. Tognum CTO Dr. Ulrich Dohle expressed particular thanks to those responsible for their support in realizing this achievement and added that this was the only way of maintaining manufacturing on an economically feasible basis, and thus of safeguarding employment, in a high-wage country such as Germany.
From the outset, the project took full account of town and country planning issues. A great deal of money was invested to ensure that the building blends into the landscape. The northern section of the 46,000m2 structure merges into a slope whilst most of the roof area will be planted with greenery. Apart from trucks entering and leaving the site, actual operations at the MMC will remain unobtrusive. The trucks themselves will be loaded and unloaded in an enclosed hall.
The Materials Management Center is scheduled to begin step-by-step ramp-up from the start of 2012 with fully operational status expected mid-year. mtu has commissioned Stute Verkehrs-GmbH, a subsidiary of the Kühne + Nagel logistics group, to operate the MMC. No decision has yet been taken on the timing of construction for the second phase of the project which involves a further 10,000m2 building footprint.