OREANDA-NEWS. KAMAZ held the workshop “Development of Production system KAMAZ at Plants Manufacturing Special Equipment” for more than 80 partners of the company.

The main purpose of the workshop organized by KAMAZ was to share practical experience, tell about achievements and problems in “lean manufacturing”. Since 50% of all products sold by the automobile plant is chassis, this year’s task is to keep the leadership in the market segment of special equipment. This goal can be achieved by the company only in close cooperation with special equipment manufacturers. The organizers planned to share lean ideas with KAMAZ’s partners in order to gain a higher economic effect from their cooperation. Yury Klochkov, Deputy General Director of OJSC KAMAZ – CEO, said that KAMAZ implemented lean technologies using methods of its German partner Daimler and that it was a unique opportunity for each partner enterprise to use the global know-how at their production units.

The workshop included five master classes and tours of departments producing bus chassis and superstructures at the automobile plant. There were many managers who were familiarized with the terminology of lean production at the workshop. But some of the guests for the first time learned how to save the company’s means taking simple steps, what the difference between expenses and losses is, and why elimination of losses requires no investments.

Vladimir Ponomaryov, General Director of KAMAZ’s official dealer – RIAT, said that the enterprise had successfully adopted lean technologies. “Being not far from KAMAZ and visiting it very often, we know and understand many things,” he said. “But here I have learned new information about interesting methods which will be used to develop our Production System.” According to Aleksandr Skolkov, General Director of Grabovsky Automobile Plant, the use of lean technologies ensures annual growth of 20-30% and brings “real” money to business. “It’s a very good workshop and a very difficult theme. It is not so easy to involve a large number of employees into realization of such an important project,” he emphasized. “KAMAZ chassis is almost 50% of the total superstructure production volume, and we are lucky that we can learn advanced methods of management.”

KAMAZ started introducing “lean manufacturing” principles in 2006. This system is aimed at satisfying customers’ needs, determining and eliminating losses, rationalizing. According to Yury Klochkov, for seven years KAMAZ gained a total economic effect in the sum of 22.5 billion roubles and an accumulative effect of 59 billion roubles from the implementation of lean instruments.