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A Visit to the Fendt Cabin Plant in Asbach-Bäumenheim—Part 3

December 13, 2025December 2, 2025 by Christoph Roser

In this third and last post on the Fendt Cabin Plant in Asbach-Bäumenheim, I will look in great detail at their digital dashboards as well as their excellent blue collar–driven continuous improvement process. I believe that true excellence can be achieved only through fast front-line improvement driven by the operators, and Fendt in Asbach-Bäumenheim is a good example of where it worked. As shown in my previous post, this plant has an outstanding performance, and the improvement system is the key driver for that. Read on!

A Visit to the Fendt Cabin Plant in Asbach-Bäumenheim—Part 2

November 25, 2025November 25, 2025 by Christoph Roser

This is my second post on the excellent Fendt Cabin Plant in Asbach-Bäumenheim, which impressed me a lot with their efficiency and general organization. In my last post, I looked at the plant and the line in general. In this post I will go deeper into the topic of efficiency, line balancing, and shop floor management. My last post will then look into their good digital dashboard as well as their blue collar–driven continuous improvement process. Read on!

A Visit to the Fendt Cabin Plant in Asbach-Bäumenheim—Part 1

November 18, 2025November 18, 2025 by Christoph Roser

Recently, I had the chance to visit the Fendt Cabin Plant in Asbach-Bäumenheim (between Stuttgart and Munich) thanks to an invite from Tarik Kadrispahić from Targer Consulting (Thank you, Tarik!). I’d previously had the chance to see their main plant in Marktoberdorf, and I liked it a lot. Hence, I entered their plant in Asbach-Bäumenheim with high expectations. And Fendt did not disappoint! In this first blog post of this series, I will look at the plant in general, and the details of the assembly line.

Different Aspects of Seeing a Shop Floor—Data

August 21, 2025February 27, 2024 by Christoph Roser

In this series on how to understand a shop floor, I talked a lot about the physical shop floor—which in my view is the more important part. However, as mentioned in my last post, looking at already collected data also gives a lot of insight into the shop floor. Depending on the aspect you are interested in, data may be the only way to grasp the situation. Hence, this post will look deeper into how to work with data to understand the shop floor.

Different Aspects of Seeing a Shop Floor—Gemba vs. Data

August 21, 2025February 20, 2024 by Christoph Roser

In my last three posts I showed you how I look at shop floors, starting with some general guidance (FOCUS!) and going into detail through the different aspects of what I try to observe on the shop floor (5S, visual management, waste, unevenness, overburden, and safety). This usually gives me a reasonable overview of what is going on on the shop floor. However, this is not all I do. For projects, I may have project specific observations (e.g., when I do a SMED project, I observe in detail the actual changeover). But beyond that, there is another source: the available data! Hence, this post will compare information you observed yourself on the shop floor (the gemba) vs. data obtained by others or by computers.

Different Aspects of Seeing a Shop Floor—Unevenness, Overburden, and Safety

August 21, 2025February 13, 2024 by Christoph Roser

This post continues my series on how I try to understand an unfamiliar shop floor. In the last post I talked about how to see visual management, 5S, and waste. These are usually easy to see. This post continues with unevenness, overburden, and safety, which are usually harder to observe.

Different Aspects of Seeing a Shop Floor—Visual Management, 5S, and Waste

August 21, 2025February 6, 2024 by Christoph Roser

In my last post I looked at some general tips on how to see the shop floor. Most of them involve focusing on the right areas of the shop floor, and avoiding interesting but not relevant technical details. This post will discuss different aspects that can be observed. Here, too, try not to see everything at the same time. This will make you like a young tiger hunting ducks; if he tries to catch them all, he will catch none.

Different Aspects of Seeing a Shop Floor—Introduction

August 21, 2025January 30, 2024 by Christoph Roser

I am in the lucky position of seeing a lot of different shop floors through my work. This requires me to quickly understand what is going on on the shop floor and to estimate how well the shop floor is managed. What my hosts tell me and what I see unfortunately does not always match. In this series of posts I would like to go through my steps for understanding the shop floor to form my own opinion on the production system.