Long-term investment plan consistently implemented

Long-term investment plan consistently implemented
BEUMER strengthens Beckum as an industrial site

Beckum, 23 November 2007. With considerable investments in optimising its production processes, construction of new storage and research halls as well as purchase of new production installations, the BEUMER Group has strengthened Beckum as an industrial site in recent years. Since its founding in 1935, BEUMER, a family company now operating worldwide, has made a significant contribution to industrial development in the town of Beckum, Germany. In the course of advancing globalisation, ever more massive price pressure on the market and expansion of its worldwide operations, the owner-managed company has set itself the goal of consolidating its site in Germany with long-term investments and structural modifications. The company began sustainable investment like this as far back as 1999 and has up until now worked on its further consistent development that will be continued in the future as well.

This progressive orientation has been characterised by a spirit of innovation, by communication and by the constant dialogue between marketing, sales, technical department, research and development. With about 750 employees worldwide in a total of ten subsidiaries, BEUMER develops complex logistics solutions in the fields of conveying, loading, palletising and packaging technology as well as in sortation and distribution systems. In order to remain competitive in the future as well and to be able to offer practically oriented developments for all requirements, the company has invested heavily in its in-house engineering centre for research and development at its home base in Beckum, Germany.

Space available for the research centre doubled
With construction of a new hall for tests in 2000 the R&D engineering centre space was doubled. The research centre where mechanical and electrical engineers develop and optimise the BEUMER product range now extends over 1,900 square metres. In order to remain on top of state-of-the-art technology in the future, the BEUMER Group has every year invested about three percent of its total sales in research and development. And in that sense, the R&D Engineering Centre is not only to be understood as a pure research and development centre but also engages in intense dialogue with suggestions, requirements and wishes from its customers and from the market because only constant dialogue with the user allows it to come up with forward looking product trends that meet the demands.
The BEUMER Group made another investment by building the new warehouse halls. In order to take the pressure off direct production space, 4,000 square metres of warehouse space for incoming goods were completed together with a new shipping hall. The space gained in this way can now be used by production for interim storage. By building the shipping hall the BEUMER Group reacted to the doubling of its order volume in the last three years. In order to meet stiffening requirements, construction started in August 2007 on a hall about 2,100 square metres large on the corporate campus in Beckum. The BEUMER Group has invested about one million euro in construction measures that are to be finished in November. To supplement construction of the new hall procedures in shipping practice are to be optimised in order to adapt packaging and filling of outgoing goods to the demands of shipment.

Restructuring of work processes
Besides hall expansion and new construction there have also been investments in restructuring and reorganisation of all production processes with which the BEUMER Group intends to maintain its place in the vanguard of market leadership. In addition, the company has installed new laser cutting and bending technology. The design was adapted to the diverse opportunities offered by laser technology. By using a flexible production system, machine utilisation of the CNC machinery in the sawing and laser divisions could be raised by 30 to 60 percent. Simultaneous optimisation of the flow of information now allows for the greatest possible transparency between all of the company's IT systems in all production segments and thus ensures significant scheduling security.

New painting facilities
With a total investment of about euro 2.3 million the company has installed new painting installations and now complies with the new federal emissions safety law that goes into force at the end of November. In the course of installing the new throughput and large parts painting installations, ventilation infrastructure was also modernised. At the same time complete remediation of hall and soil was carried out. Thanks to the purchase of the painting installations, capacity in this division has been doubled. In addition, solvent discharge has been reduced by 60 percent and clearly improved quality of surface coating has been attained.

Redesigned training centre
By consistently implementing the long-term investment plan, the Beckum site is state-of-the-art in modern technology with optimised internal flows of materials and restructured work processes. As a result of successful implementation it has also been possible to redesign and expand the training centre with its modern commercial and industrial departments.

For family-owned BEUMER, social responsibility for the site is part of corporate success. An important contribution is the creation of jobs and trainee jobs in the region.