Growing in Wallonia

In 2014, we decided to invest durably in Wallonia by joining industrial and  (e.g. Logistics in Wallonia). Since then, we have worked in different companies such as NLMK Clabecq and SNCB NMBS and partnered with Walloon industrial actors (e.g. ). In order to get closer to our partners, we decided to join the  to allow us to be more flexible to collaborate, work closer to our market and also facilitate any legal and subsides operations with Walloons companies.

Our new branch is located:

Wallonia :I-Tech Incubator | rue Auguste Piccard 48 bte 31 | Aeropole de Charleroi B-6041 Gosselies

How to operate in a U-shaped Cell?

Reduce travel distance by arranging equipment and workstations closer together. The beginning of the process must be close to the the end of the process. The goal is to minimize the travel distance between each steps and cycles.

What do you need in order to implement Cellular Manufacturing?

• Organize  your operations and equipment in a logic and  validated U-Shaped Cell
• Empower your operators and set multimachine and multiskilled operators as a standard
• Favor small, flexible machines
• Using autonomation (Jidoka) to eliminate machine watching

How to design cells for ?

1. Analyse & document the process today (ASIS Situation)
2. Define the product family that the cell will produce and calculate the TAKT Time for the cell
3. Balance the work to create flow between work-stations that meets demand constraints
4. Design the cell for ergonomics
5. Implement, test and improve the cell through continuous improvement

We believe that operations and change management are first and foremost human centered activities. That’s why we decided that present you our activities by presenting you one of our team member.

Let us first introduce you to Omar, the first consultant that joined our lean consulting team. He is a passionate person born in Morocco that travelled across Spain and Belgium while majoring as an engineer in industrial and logistics management.

As AMIA’s customer you have the choice to use our software to implement incremental change but also to empower us for a broader mission: being your partner to tackle your  challenges towards creative and implementable solutions resulting in a global improvement of your operations.

Triggering and implementing changes in industrial environment are major challenges characterized by a high complexity.

How do we overcome complexity? We always develop solutions while offering incremental changes. Our IT capabilities and software allow us to understand deeply the flows, the layout in use and to take a global view of the process. This first approach allows to consolidate data, validate them through a visual way and ensure the same understanding and vision by all the stakeholders. With our solution, we are able to rapidly identify how to gradually improve the situation. From quick-wins at kick-off to solution implementation at the end, we focus on maximizing our results/efforts ratio.

Why is Lean part of our consulting philosophy? aim at eliminating all kind of waste within manufacturing. It allows us to understand deeper and identify faster inefficiencies. By applying lean, we also ease the communication and add a methodological frame to our approach. Moreover, we are certified and use other  methodologies such as six sigma LSS, ADKAR, TOC, etc.

How do we perform better? At AMIA, we value our partners as human beings rather than customers. We are able to develop the best solution tailored to you, as we go further than mathematical optimization to consider deeply the human factor. Omar praise smiling and actively taking part in the operations rather than sitting at his desk. And guess what? That is where he learns the key information leading him to increase your results.

Some stakeholders are reluctant to change? That’s why we implement ourselves deeply in the daily activities of your company and centralize the needs and recommendations of all the stakeholders, from management to operators. Our final goal is to develop a solution that will be practically implemented and this can only be achieved by creating a strong consensus around a solution.

Why are we the manufacturing consulting solution to your problem? Because we overcome industrial complexity by combining:

• Strong software capabilities
• A tailored lean approach
• The agility and adaptation capabilities of a proven startup
• A human conscious approach
• A focus on incremental results-driven changes

We are proud to celebrate our 3rd Birthday during this month of May. AMIA Systems was created the 7th of May 2014  after a long path initiated in 2010 with the thesis of Emmanuelle Vin, our CEO.

Three intense years of growth and learning later, our company is pushed by 9 team members working hard to improve and facilitate industrial operations. What do we do?

• We develop software solutions for factory layout design and planning & scheduling operations.
• We perform operational excellence consulting: through analysis, definition and implementation
• We share our practical and theoretical expertise through lean and operational excellence training.

This birthday is also a perfect occasion to celebrate our successes and look back to our achievements and milestones.

What are we focusing on right now?

• Increasing the level of maturity of our Planner by
  • tailoring its interface and user experience
  • allowing a more flexible usage of the software by management as well as operators
• By winning the Rise Award 2016, we were funded to develop solutions in new markets based on our existing software and expertise.  In this view, we are researching and developing three products:
  • VLSI based optimisation algoritms
  • SIMOGGA WMS: an application allowing to visualize, optimize and quantify warehouse activities based on Warehouse Management System data extraction.
  • SIMOGGA Connect: Our Industrial IOT (#IIOT) solution
• Operational excellence consulting and training such as the one we provide to our partner NLMK Clabecq.

This birthday is also the perfect occasion to thank our clients and all the individuals that backed us, trusted us and motivated us to ease and renew manufacturing operations.

NLMK produces heavy steel plates of varying quality and dimensions (3 to 24 meters). After production, the plates are stacked above each other at on-site warehouses. Once a truck arrives at the warehouse, the ordered plates need to be located, freed from the plates stored above and charged into the truck. This process is therefore time consuming, representing a costly bottleneck. Locating, tracking and loading plates is complex as the plates are moving permanently from storage unit to others. The former system was not ensuring the reliability of the inventory, limiting the output capacity and creating non optimal workload.

NLMK management and our consultants partnered to develop and implement a specific track & trace solution allowing to locate and track the plates while assigning efficient storage location.  The challenges? Managing the change in an extremely prudent industry as steel, building a strong consensus amongst the stakeholders, proof testing the solution on the floor level and deliver a functional and 100% trustworthy inventory management system.

The implication of all the stakeholders in the design of the solution allowed to implement a fully functional system on one production line warehouse within 3 months unlocking a 99% inventory reliability. After roll-out on the whole plant, the output capacity of the factory grew by 20%, lowering the average output time by 35%. The proximity and presence of our consultant allowed a smooth transition and acceptance of the solution ensuring the use of the track and trace at its full potential. As stated by field operators: “Our work is incredibly facilitated: we don’t waste time anymore on locating the plates”. This positive feeling towards the system and tracking guns is strengthened by the fact the operators participated in the definition process, therefore ensuring a high practical usability.

SNCB-NMBS is the national railway company of Belgium. The site of Salzinnes performs the major maintenance of diesel and electric locomotives, with complete dismantling and revision of all its component parts (electric motors, relays, bogies, axles, diesel engines)

The increase of internal demand and the EU market liberalization of the train maintenance sector in Europe force Salzinnes’ site to improve its productivity in order to meet the coming load growth. The entire site is being redesigned to increase capacity while reducing lead time. Before investing, SNCB-NMBS needs to validate the operational capabilities of the future line while taking efficient decisions.

The bogie section of the plant (the chassis carrying wheels) is crucial in the maintenance flow and was the first focus of our analysis. Moving the bogie hall was the perfect occasion to optimize flows through adopting a cell layout. SIMOGGA Layout in combination with SIMOGGA Planner were used to visualize the future layout and simulate the planning based on parameters such as shifts, lot sizes, operations distribution and finite capacity constraints such as human resources or equipment.

The material produced by SIMOGGA (visualization, quantification and optimizations) was used to communicate and convince decision-makers. The cost of investments has been minimized (including the cancelation of a relocation of a machine and a new investment for ~1Mio€) while maximizing the future line capacity (increased by 150%), removing bottlenecks and decreasing the lead time from 20 to 6,5 days. has validated its operational, financial and logistical choices and is moving forward with a strong understanding of its future operations.

Sébastien Corneillie, Implementation Responsible SNCB-NMBS