Digitization and optimization of production flow in a manufacturing company

The present work proposed in the thesis aims at Introducing Digitization under the concept of Horizontal Deployment in a Horizontally Integrated company along with LEAN principles to improve the production efficiency. Tecnovalvo srl an Italian valve industry founded in 1956, is a market leader in the design, production and marketing of special valves for the chemical, petrochemical, pharmaceutical and similar industries. SchuF on the other hand, founded in 1911 in Frankfurt am Main. is a medium-sized multinational mechanical engineering company whose focus is on the design and manufacture of process-critical valves to customer requirements. They are market leader for specialty valves to the chemical related industries. Being the direct competitor to each other, manufacturing some similar valves, SchuF acquired Tecnovalvo in 2008 to penetrate the Italian valve market and increase market power via Tecnovalvo‘s historical customer base. Though they manufacture similar valves, their methodologies are radically different from each other. SchuF is much more forward by digitization their entire flow process while Tecnovalvo is plowing through their good old work methodologies. Before the Integration, Tecnovalvo was contented with their own manufacturing methodologies , but after the Integration more orders started flowing in, inducing a need to ramp up the production in order to meet up with the demands. In this thesis, we will be describing about the digitization changes brought into Tecnovalvo from SchuF through ERP in tackling three major issues, the challenges faced and the solutions provided to implant the changes in the employees standard process structure.