Schefenacker, Clear view

Manufacturing in Action, Source : The Manufacturer US

Schefenacker is a name that was barely visible in the US five years ago. As Ruari McCallion discovers, it is now a leading Tier One supplier to the auto industry across the US

When you get in to your car for the drive home tonight, have a quiet look around. A lot has changed in the last few years, mostly for the better. The seats are more comfortable, of course, and they’re quite likely to be electronically controlled. The windows, too, are much safer than the old-style glazing, which shattered into millions of tiny pieces. The audio system will likely be integrated into the central dash, which is a far cry from the unbalanced boxes that used to hang out from under. The instruments are clearer, the soundproofing is better, and all-round vision is much improved.

Now turn your attention to the mirror. Describing the unit as simply a mirror almost belittles the advances that have been made in the technology. A lot of them have been innovated and develop by Schefenacker Vision Systems, Inc., and that’s a name that barely even existed in the US at the turn of the century. Its American mirror plant is located at Marysville, MI.

“Schefenacker is a privately-owned company, which was established by the father of our current chairman, Dr. Alfred Schefenacker, as a supplier of lights and mirrors for military vehicles, back in the 1930s,” says Stephen Noon, managing director of Schefenacker Vision Systems. “The company was principally European-based until October 2000, when it acquired the global rear-vision systems business of Britax. That acquisition gave us facilities all over the globe.” Schefenacker exclusively supplies the auto industry and its business split is 70 percent mirrors to 30 percent lights and lighting systems. The Marysville plant is one that came in as part of the acquisition: Britax had been there since the 1990s, when it was built as a greenfield development. It initially grew quickly, principally supplying the Ford Motor Company, but has extended its customer base further into the US auto industry.

“Britax brought Ford as a customer to Schefenacker, which was already doing business with DaimlerChrysler,” he says. “Europe is still our major market; we’re dominant in auto lighting and vision systems, especially in high end vehicles but we’re now the number two supplier of exterior mirrors, in the US, and market leader in exterior mirrors globally. Sales in 2003 totaled $770 million in rear vision, with $210 million coming from exterior lighting. The group also supplies Freeglass, the light and strong patented plastic glazing system used on the Smart car, the micro vehicle that has attracted praise as both practical and comfortable urban transport and as en eye-catching piece of design.

Schefenacker Vision Systems’ Marysville facility currently has around 750 employees on the payroll. Plant I extends to 150,000 square feet and houses the main production lines and the technology center. Plant II, at 35,000 square feet, was originally utilized as a warehouse but now hosts laboratory facilities and 11 assembly lines for service business. The newest building, Plant III, was acquired in 2002 and is operated as a 33,500-square-foot warehouse. But growing demand for the company’s products will soon require more space, and expansion is an ongoing process.

“We will be moving from our existing warehouse into a new, 65,000-square-foot building, which will comprise a warehouse and a 16,000-square-foot paint shop,” says Noon. A total of $11 million is being invested in the new warehouse, from an alliance of Schefenacker itself, local government, councils and Michigan’s Economic Development Alliance. The land and building will be leased by Schefenacker for 10 years, at which point it will have the option to buy it for $1. The company itself is putting in the paint plant, at a cost of $7 million; the government has contributed $1 million and has contributed resources for training.

Schefenacker developed exterior mirrors that incorporate turn signals—the first was fitted to a Mercedes as original equipment in 1998 and it’s going further, with “blind spot” systems. The advance in functions incorporated in vision systems, both internal and external, is quite staggering: Today’s interior mirror value is 20 times that of the 1997 equivalent. Outside the car, the company has been busy innovating and designing new products that make a positive contribution to safety. The door mirror units that incorporate turn signals are Schefenacker innovations. “We’re even mounting temperature sensors in our mirrors; they’re better there than under the bumper bar, which can be a heat sink.”

Schefenacker’s Telescopic Trailer Tow mirror is factory fitted and is designed to improve rearward visibility for drivers towing vans or towable recreational vehicles, whose lateral dimensions completely block conventional mirrors’ line-of-sight. The electrically-adjustable mirror glass works off the car’s existing mirror switch; the unit can incorporate heated glass for icy conditions; and LED clearance lights ensure that other drivers are clearly aware of the vehicle’s total dimensions. The telescopic Trailer Tow unit can even incorporate LED turn signals in the mirror housing, so vehicles alongside know about drivers’ intentions. The Marysville plant produced 45,000 mirrors a day in 2003, and that number is heading upwards.

“We have several new launches happening this year. Our mirrors will be fitted as standard on the new Mercedes M-Class; the new Ford Explorer and Ranger models; and on the Chrysler 300C, WK, and XK platforms,” Noon says. Design is a big part of the facility’s efforts and success in penetrating the market. “We are Catia V.5 capable, which gives us a competitive advantage. We’re really exploring the boundaries of what V.5 offers: It allows us to change design features of a part and have it done in a matter of minutes, right across the range.” The Marysville plant is capable of full product design, tool design, and prototyping.

The list of quality and supplier awards Schefenacker has achieved requires a pretty big trophy cabinet, too. In March, the Marysville facility gained the President’s Award as a Top 10 supplier from GM Canada’s CAMI plant. It gained the Ford Motor Company’s World Excellence Award and DaimlerChrysler’s Gold Award, both in 2001.The French operation was named Factory of the Year in 1998; the Australian operation was named the industries’ supplier of the year in 2003 and 2004; the British facility was nominated Factory of the Year and Engineering Industry’s Best Factory in1999. It’s a point that Schefenacker doesn’t hesitate to make: it genuinely has the global capacity to deliver quality. That’s due in no small part to the emphasis on improvement.

“We’ve pursued continuous improvement in this plant for many years. I believe we have to, in order to remain competitive,” says Noon. “We have dedicated lean and kaizen resources here, and conduct kaizen workshops every month, in different cells. They generally last five days and involve cross-functional teams. Some of the improvements we’ve achieved have been in the field of improving materials flow and creating and monitoring business measurables; we use real time measurements to achieve improvement.” The first day of each workshop covers the philosophy and principals of kaizen and lean. It may be something people think they’re familiar with, but there’s no harm at all in refreshing their knowledge. That way, they will keep looking out for opportunities. The next three to four days are what Noon described as the “springboard process,” where improvements are sought and implemented in specific activities and processes.

“The aims of the kaizen workshops are to get real information so we can track improvement very quickly; we don’t want to wait till the end of the month to find out if we could be doing something better across the plant,” he says. But doesn’t having individuals or departments completely dedicated to improvement and/or quality run the risk of being a poisoned chalice? Doesn’t it mean that the problem becomes someone else’s, something that can be left to the next round of workshops?

“We haven’t just got a lean engineer: Our operations director is a lean guru. We have a number of kaizen qualified engineers, who are there to facilitate and instill the philosophy and principles. That way, more improvement ideas get raised, tried, and approved,” he asserted. “I agree, though, that I don’t want a lean department at this plant; I want 500 lean adepts, every single person on the shop floor.” In problem solving, Schefenacker uses analysis tools based on Shainin, which Noon describes as similar to six sigma in concept.

One of the areas that delivers improvement is standardization, in design, materials, and methodologies. Marysville has 46 molding machines, ranging in capacity from 88 to 750 tons, and 36 dedicated original equipment assembly lines, but the people and the machinery can be changed quickly. Schefenacker is a family-owned company, and the family is based in Germany. The Germans are known to be greatly enamored of machines and automation, to the point, some have said, where the love of automation can get in the way of effectiveness and improvement. After all, automation will make your existing processes go faster, whether they’re good, bad, or indifferent. Noon doesn’t believe that Schefenacker has fallen into that particular trap.

“The influence of Germany is here, in our desire to automate some tasks; we’re in the early stages of automating the mirror assembly process,” he says. “But we only pursue automation where it makes sense. The opportunities for fully automating mirror assembly are limited—the big opportunity is in standardization. That way, we can have the same tester, use the same stud or screwdriver and practice the same poke-yoke. So we automate fastenings and, when it opens, our new paint shop will be highly automated. We have and will continue to have a big push for standardization of processes and design, in order that we can drive efficiencies through our production.”

Schefenacker’s US operations have a five-point strategy for growth and development. First, it intends to improve cost competitiveness, and the paint shop at Marysville is an important element of that. Second, it aims to improve the capability of the organization, through its processes and its people. That involves a mixture of training in Shainin, lean, kaizen, and leadership. The third element is very important: it’s about expanding the customer base. The initial focus is on securing transplant business, work with companies that have moved into the US and with which other Schefenacker plants across the world may have contracts. A recent success has been winning work for Nissan’s upcoming Altima model. The fourth priority is to increase the value-added offer.

“We will be incorporating more power features, increasing the use of memory, and adding features like temperature sensors more widely. We are using the mirror as an envelope for packaging features within the car,” says Noon. The fifth element is the introduction of new products, like the Telescopic Trailer Tow mirror.

In terms of new product introduction, Schefenacker is something of a serial offender. Over the past 10 years, it introduced the first LED-based signal light on a car, in 1995; the first turn signal in an exterior mirror; made the first use of plastic windows in a road car; introduced the first interior mirror with multiple functions, in 1998. The following year, Cadillacs sported the first-ever all LED tail lights; that was followed by the first EL-foil interior ambient light, in Mercedes and Maybach cars. Two years ago, Jaguar sported the first LIN-Bus applications in an exterior mirror and the first chip-on-board thin LED signal light appeared on a Chevrolet.

Another first: in 2002, a Maybach was equipped with the first-ever Dolby Digital Surround 5.1 system in a car. A few hundred miles south of Marysville, in Selmer, TN, is Reitter & Schefenacker USA LP. It was established to support a Mercedes project in the 1990s, when the company was strengthening its presence in North America. Reitter & Schefenacker specializes in the provision of rear lighting systems. Like its sister company in Marysville, it places a strong emphasis on design and innovation. It doesn’t simply bolt systems together from existing parts: each component is designed, developed, and integrated for each specific car model.

Schefenacker has expanded rapidly in the past five years, lifting itself from a leading regional player to a true global provider of advanced vision, lighting and audio systems for world-class manufacturers. That’s because it is dedicated to world-class performance itself. It argues that its commitment to a culture of advanced technology, innovation, and flexibility makes it dynamic in response to an industry that is changing fast.

It’s a pretty sound argument.

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