Full Service Contract Helps Automotive Manufacturer Optimise Processes

The automotive manufacturing site includes stamping, Body in White paint, and assembly lines. Approximately 2400 different models of cars leave the factory per day. 

To keep that high manufacturing pace, it is mandatory for the customer to rely on efficient operating processes, including the filter supply for all of the various applications on-site.

The filter purchasing for the different applications in this manufacturing site was not coordinated, and therefore filters were bought from a huge variety of suppliers. This led to coordination problems that resulted in long delivery times, as well as technical issues that delayed manufacturing production.

AAF offered a full-service contract to this customer, in order to provide the variety of filters needed at the site for each of the different application processes: air filters, paint filters, water filters, oil filters, and high pressure filters, with an overall goal to reduce energy costs and increase filter lifetime.

It was crucial for the successful implementation of a full-service approach to take each of the requirements from the many departments involved into account. The Maintenance, Painting, Procurement, and Supply Chain Departments each had goals that needed to be addressed individually.

Special attention was paid to the paint lines department, since failures here can have the most negative consequences, namely the contamination of freshly painted cars for which time-consuming and costly rework would be unavoidable.

Because this manufacturing site would be their first site worldwide to implement a full-service solution, the customer had understandable doubts if AAF would be able to manage such a complex project. Therefore, AAF agreed to follow a step-by-step approach during the implementation phase. This process was met with remarkable success.

After several months of implementation work, AAF's full-service solution was completely executed and has been running reliably for three years. Since implementation, the customer at this manufacturing site has made amazing improvements compared to the situation before they started the partnership with AAF.

In addition, this customer's entire automotive group benefits from the success of this project. It was presented to the group and as a result, the approach was shared with their European purchasing department. Meanwhile, two other plants also implemented similar filtration solutions with AAF.