Flashback Metal Meets – the 3. Round
On 21 February 2019, leaders of the metals industry met for the third time in CologneSKY to get to grips with the “Agile” concept in this year’s Metal Meets.
After an introduction by Marc Hartmann, Senior Partner of B&C, three presentations on “Agile Strategy” (Ms. Prof. Dr. Kerstin Seeger, Performance Consulting), “Flexibilization of a Producing Organization” (Mr. Janaki Weiden, Saint-Gobain Bearings) and “Leadership Responsibility in Agile Transformation” (Mr. Dr. Ulrich Albrecht-Früh, Munich Leadership Group) stimulated intensive discussions about the three operating principles of agility:
- Short work units
- Only few tools and prioritization of “timeboxing”
- Intensive, hierarchy-free team work
After a lively networking lunch the discussion was further enriched by the afternoon session, which focused on the question “Which tools can support agile working practices?”. B&C showed some interesting examples what “BI tools as tools for agile management” enable us to do today and what we can expect from them in the future. Metal Meets participants were asked to complete an anonymous survey and the results were also shown during this presentation. Most respondents saw the primary benefits of the use of BI tools in providing a well-grounded basis for decision-making and fast control and regulation.
In the following very active panel discussion, the speakers from various industries (Alex Antony: CIO in an engineering company, Guntram Grönitz: Agile Coach in the telecommunication industry, Dr. Guido Stebner: COO of DEW) and the participants of the event exchanged their personal experiences regarding the use of agile management methods. The final presentation of the day, held by B&C, demonstrated how “Data Science” may support agility in the supply chain. In particular, the process and a specific tool to professionalize sales forecasting were presented as key elements of S&OP.
The successful day was completed with Kölsch beer, finger food, a spectacular view of Cologne at night and the first topic suggestions for Metal Meets 2020!
„B&C made the topic “Agile” very practical and from the range of thematically diverse presentations and panel discussions, I could take away interesting aspects on the topic, which I consider very helpful for the successful handling of the future operations in the Salzgitter Group.“
Burkhard Becker, Executive Board Member and CFO
Salzgitter
„Bronk & Company has once again managed to provide an interesting, multifaceted forum on a very current topic. In today’s business environment agility is an essential element of every modern organization to enable it to react flexibly, quickly and proactively to current and very volatile changes in its supply chain and market. For a “state of the art” S&OP approach, agility is therefore business critical!“
Thomas Anstots, Head of Sales, BA Europe
Outokumpu
„The event was particularly interesting for me, as it covered generally but also particularly with the presentations “Agile Strategy” and “Agile Supply Chain”, exactly those issues which we are currently intensively pushing forward in our organization. I could take away a lot of helpful points from the presentations and discussions.”
Christian Bieber, Head of Operating System & Asset Management
Kloeckner Metals Operations
„With the choice of speakers, B&C prepared the topic “Agile” very well and examined it thoroughly from all perspectives. Personally, I found the input on how agility may be supported by BI tools very interesting.“
Andreas Manthey, Head of Process Management
HKM
