Ten Cate: Investing in efficiency and in people
“Our intuition and all technological, fault, and quality knowledge are now bundled and easily accessible to everyone.”
Bert Bouwhuis
Operator and Vocational Instructor
“I am surprised by the professionalism of the instrument and the extent to which it enables interaction between the operator and information.”
Ivo Spaargaarden
Operations Director
Key challenges of a growing company
A few years ago, TenCate underwent an ambitious growth program and improvement process aimed at achieving higher delivery reliability, less downtime, more consistent product quality, and better training and higher knowledge levels for operators. This meant only one thing: investing in efficiency and in people.
Critical information
Improvement begins by looking at existing knowledge and information. Substantive, technical information for every production line is available. Thick manuals guide you meticulously through the entire production process. However, each discipline approaches the process from its own perspective: quality control, the technological process, and the maintenance department. And the fact that you have to look up in the first burner to see if the fabric is running tight is not in there. That is experience.
Do you hear that soft hum?
Many operators have been working for Ten Cate for years. They know the production lines they operate like the back of their hand. They know how the production hall should smell, how the line should sound, and where to look to see at a glance if the fabric is running tight enough through the machine. The Technical Service has the same kind of knowledge. With that one specific fault report, it is often just a matter of a loose lid. It is simply a case of clicking the lid back into place and you can continue. You just have to know it.
Bundling knowledge and experience
Mark Oude Aarninkhof (right in the photo), operations manager at Ten Cate Protective Fabrics, says: “We decided to look for a partner who could develop a single instrument for each production line containing all critical process information, including all experiential knowledge. We chose ELICIT, who are strong at ‘extracting knowledge from heads,’ as they say themselves. And I can now confirm that from my own experience.”
Ready in 4 workshops
Operator and vocational instructor Bert Bouwhuis has worked at Ten Cate for 27 years. He was involved in the first production line that ELICIT mapped out. “Wouter Schotborgh from ELICIT brought all the involved disciplines together: 2 operators/vocational instructors, 1 technologist, 1 quality employee, and 2 employees from the Technical Service. This led to interesting discussions, for example, about what to do when one of the burners fails. The technologist knows that running the line slower leads to color differences in the final product. However, my focus as an operator is more on preventing the line from coming to a standstill. The effect our actions have on the final product is less clear to us.” It took four workshop sessions, but then there was a complete and clear overview of the most important relationships between settings, production components, and final quality, including instructions on what to do in case of malfunctions. Bert Bouwhuis looks back with satisfaction: “Our intuition and all technological, fault, and quality knowledge are now bundled and easily accessible to everyone.”
One tool for reference, training, and assessment
Ivo Spaargaren (left in the photo), operations director at Ten Cate Protective Fabrics, agrees: “I am surprised by the professionalism of the instrument and the extent to which it enables interaction between the operator and information. All information is directly available ‘along the line’ via an iPad. Thanks to the assessment questions ELICIT has developed, we can also use the tool as an annual refresher course and for training new operators. In this way, the instrument contributes to both efficiency and increasing the level of knowledge.”
