OUR SERVICES IN THIS PROJECT

GKN Wheels manufacturers a fullrange of customer specific wheels for construction and agricultural equipment such as excavators, loaders, tractors and harvesters for supply to OEM’s like JCB, John Deere, Claas, CNH and AGCO. 

GKN Wheels has 23 wheel models for sale to Agricultural customers. Each wheel consist of two types of steel, each in different sheet gauges and sizes. The sheet sizes where engineered to minimize scrap, resulting in over 40 different specifications. In order to respond to seasonal business, most of these specification where put on stock.

We discovered that from the 23 wheel models, 17 models where dimensionwise so close to each other that producing them out of six instead of 17 different steel types, would lead to an average additional scrap loss of only 1%.

We advised on redesigning the steel sheets sizes, take the 1% additional scrap loss in favour of strongly reducing the number of steel specs on stock. In cooperation with GKN's supply chain partners we realised a lead time reduction from six weeks to three days.