How costdata developed a method for controlled profit maximisation and implemented it as a controlling instrument in companies.
E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-7693-6616-7
Verlag: BoD - Books on Demand
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Frank Weinert, a graduate engineer, has more than 35 years' experience in cost engineering, purchasing, pro- duction and controlling in virtually all sectors of the manufacturing industry. He studied production engineering in Cologne and began his career as a trainee at Ford-Werke AG, where he was responsible for purchasing a wide range of product groups. He worked for Autoeuropa, the then joint venture between VW and Ford, in Portugal from 1994 to 1996. As Senior Buyer, he sourced the first navigation systems from a supplier and helped produce the Escort convertible. In his final years at Ford, he worked extensively on product cost analysis, leading to significant price reductions. After 10 years at Ford, he became self-employed and founded costdata GmbH. The company went on to develop the standard software, costdata® calculation, and other software programmes for cost engineering, purchasing, controlling, development and production. The costdata® market data is the world's largest cost database and contains the latest prices for all product cost estimates and competitiveness analyses. Frank Weinert has been responsible for over 600 cost reduction and calculation projects, as well as setting up and developing cost engineering departments. He developed a method for controlled profit maximisation which costdata GmbH implements as a controlling instrument in companies. He is a guest lecturer at the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences and heads the Institute for Cost Engineering, which aims to raise awareness of cost engineering principles and thereby improve the efficiency of all manufacturing industries. Website: www.institute-of-cost-engineering.com
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How it all began
My parents and my brother were born in Berlin. After my brother was born, my parents took a small detour to Düsseldorf before moving to the city of Cologne, where the River Rhine is at its most beautiful. I was born there, and Cologne has remained my home to this day and, of course, also the main location of my company, costdata. My first steps in the automotive industry My professional career began in 1980 with an apprenticeship as a machine fitter at one of the most innovative companies at the time: Ford-Werke AG. It was the first time I had been involved with the automotive industry in a professional capacity. Since my early childhood I have been fascinated by cars. I used to spend countless hours lying on the floor building Lego vehicles. Cars were the biggest thing in my life. In addition to the rural surroundings of Cologne and my love of going on outdoor adventures with my friends, I developed a keen interest in technology at an early age, especially cars and motorbikes. At school I was passionate about technical drawing, mechanical engineering and materials science, and these were the first signs of what the future had in store for me. With my certificate as a skilled worker, I was able to work at Ford during the summer holidays. I earned good money, getting a decent hourly wage and sometimes even being paid by the piece. Work began early in the morning. At the end of a day's work, my hands would be black, covered with oil and dirt. Although I enjoyed getting to know all the machines and acquiring skills such as turning, milling and drilling, I knew that I wanted more. That is why, immediately after completing my apprenticeship, I decided to go to university to get an engineering degree in the field of production technology, precisely because it dealt with: How can a product be optimally produced? Which machines are available for which processes? During this time, I stumbled upon another passion: sales. I was enormously ambitious at both school and university – especially when it came to achieving financial success and building wealth. Although I was still wet behind the ears, I developed a keen interest for business at an early age. I gave myself what I wanted early on by believing that anyone who has achieved something will want to, and is allowed to, show it to the world. Even before my time at university, I started working as an insurance agent to finance this life of luxury. I had been approached by a friend who had also been recruited. My main task was to identify potential customers and offer them various insurance products, mainly accident insurance. Over time, I also started recruiting other people to sell for me. With this system, which you would no doubt refer to today as a “pyramid scheme”, the people I recruited became part of our sales chain. Doing this while studying at the same time was both incredibly stressful and enjoyable. After about a year and a half of successful work, targets were in place. We were challenged to sell more, to make more money. This eventually led to a decision that would change my life. At the age of just 20, I founded my first limited liability company with two friends. I did my university studies in the mornings and my insurance agency work in the afternoons and evenings. I was either selling insurance or doing the work of a managing director. After graduation, I dedicated myself fully to the agency. At our peak, we were coordinating no fewer than 180 freelancers who were working for us. I even recruited young people at schools and offered them the opportunity to earn money on the side. It was a fantastic time. In the end, it was my father - although proud of my early success – who convinced me to make a change. A few months after I received my engineering degree, he asked me if I really wanted to sell insurance for the rest of my life. I realised that I risked losing my value in the engineering market if I did not start my career soon. This was a turning point for me, and I had to make a difficult decision. For the first time in my life, I started filling out job applications with the intention of finally shaping my long-term future. I was close to securing a position in the sales department of a renowned food company, where I would have been trained to become a future sales director in Africa and France. Unfortunately, the third-generation owner of the company did not like the fact that I had not done my compulsory military service for health reasons, so he withdrew his offer. It was as if the universe was sending me a sign, and my path led me back to the world of technology. Ford then made me an offer that would shape my future: I was offered a position in purchasing instead of my preferred field of sales. Sometimes life takes us in a different direction than we would prefer, but it is often these unexpected twists and turns that allow us to grow the most. Ford's offer was tempting: As a graduate trainee, I was given a clearly defined career path that would see me start as a Dispatcher, progress to become an Assistant Buyer and eventually become a Buyer. I realised that many of my skills were in demand here too. I would still be involved in negotiations and relationship building, just in a slightly different role. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and learn something new. Then I went abroad, to Portugal to be precise. I worked at Autoeuropa, a joint venture between VW and Ford. Here we could see the whole process from prototyping right through to series production. I was the one in the Purchasing Department responsible for the procurement of prototype parts at exactly the right time. In Portugal, my skills attracted the attention of the then plant manager: I very quickly managed to invite the managing director of a supplier who had long been unavailable. From that day on, I was his right-hand man and knew that I had made the right choice when I decided to prioritise furthering my career. I acquired valuable knowledge about managing staff and leading teams and discovered the advantages and disadvantages of using an authoritarian management approach. After being in Portugal for a year and a half, I came back to Cologne and was faced with a very difficult situation: I had a burning desire to develop within Ford. However, I realised that my internal interviews were not up to the required standard. Despite my international experience and tireless dedication, it was as if an invisible barrier was holding me back. My vision, the longed-for goal of my professional journey, was a seat on the board of directors. Inexplicable expectations seemed to overshadow my achievements. I was deeply disappointed when I found out that Ford was not going to keep the promise it had made to me. It was as if the rug had been pulled out from under my feet and all my ambitions thwarted. When I returned from Portugal, my boss gave me new tasks. One of them was to analyse the costs of our suppliers. The focus was on making the cost structure of the products more transparent. We did not just want to compare and negotiate quotes; we wanted to be able to understand the costs involved in making a product. This new and innovative approach helped us gain deeper insight into the cost structure and break any existing price agreements. Our aim was to achieve full cost transparency of the product costs and the supplier structure to allow us to understand the offer prices. My role was one of enormous responsibility: In order to assess whether suppliers' prices were justified, it was necessary to have detailed knowledge of production costs. In the 1990s, Ford introduced this approach in Germany and I was proud to be part of that change. For a long time, we worked exclusively with rudimentary data. All we had were averages, for example for wages, from a few countries, and these were often more than three years old and therefore not accurate enough to calculate true costs. Nevertheless, we used this data to achieve a certain degree of cost transparency and to negotiate supplier price demands. Each process required its own calculation method, whether it was stamping, bending or injection moulding. However, as the years went by and I gained more experience, I began to develop ways of assessing whether the prices being charged by the suppliers were reasonable. There was a time when the price we paid for products was just a single value, without even a cost breakdown (CBD). The only thing we had was a price, and of course one of the things we did was calculate how much material was incorporated into the price. We initially performed this calculation using Excel spreadsheets. I noticed that we consistently required the same cost types, and each purchasing cost analyst had their own spreadsheet. This gave me the idea that we should have software that was programmed in such a way that it could map all the production technologies and contain all the necessary up-to-date cost data. Software that can calculate the cost of every part produced globally, regardless of the product and that always has an up-to-date cost database to draw on in the background. That was the initial spark for this idea. I then took over a colleague's area in the purchasing department, as he had been reassigned to other duties. As we got to know each other, we realised that we were aiming to achieve the same. In the early days of our start-up, CPM (1997), we put our heads together at every opportunity to drive the design of the software. I did all the sales and thought about how we could contact the companies...
