Salzgitter Mannesmann Stahlhandel supplying precision steel tubes for Maxi-Cosi

When Mr. Alexander Bosmann, purchasing manager at Dorel Juvenile (www.doreljuvenile.com), contacted Salzgitter Mannesmann Stahlhandel (SMSD) about a strategic purchasing project primarily involving precision steel tubes, he promptly received a call back from the Plochingen office, home of the central headquarters of the transregionally operating expert team for automotive and customer-designed parts. In a personal appointment scheduled at short notice, he explained his "Request for Information "(RFI) to sales director Wolfgang Schley.
 
As the new purchasing director, his goal was to reduce the procurement costs in order to achieve a sustainable expansion of Dorel Juvenile's competitive capabilities in the international market for child car seats. The market leader with the well-known Maxi-Cosi brand (www.maxi-cosi.com) was counting on close cooperation with a factory-based steel partner. Substantial savings were expected on the basis of material innovations and optimization of the material variety, and also thanks to complete supply chain management from tube manufacturing to diverse added processing stations to on-time delivery of the finished components.

In order to fulfil the very high safety standards at Dorel, the requirements on the customer-designed components for each child car seat model differ greatly. For example, while the focus of the "2wayPearl" is on the remarkably high material load, the focus for the "Tobi" or "Pebble" lies on the complex mechanical processing with the narrowest tolerance ranges. However they all have one thing in common: They are all installed as safety parts and decisively support the safe transport of children between the ages of nine months and four years. Before being released for global sale, the products must successfully pass the toughest independent crash tests (e.g., ADAC, Stiftung Warentest).
 
In order to tackle this challenge, Wolfgang Schley and product manager Karl-Heinz Mack from Product and Quality Management, which is likewise based in Plochingen, specified a separate process chain for precision steel tubes based on detailed part drawings for each intended use. Keeping the customer specifications from the RFI in mind, first they worked with their group colleagues from Technical Support and Product Development at Salzgitter Mannesmann Precision (SMP) to check if the first savings effects could be achieved for the seamless, cold-drawn dimensions by means of explicit tube manufacture. The intensive personal exchange between technology specialists from Dorel Juvenile, SMP and SMSD was very welcome and constructive. After just a few meetings and laboratory tests it was possible to configure a modified material grade specifically for a critical application area. The innovation? The complete replacement of the three different tube types that were required in the past with a single one from the SMP Brackwede factory.
 
In target costing with Ms. Els Boetzkes, purchaser at Dorel Juvenile, it became clear that this could be achieved only by means of intensive efficiency exploitation throughout the entire supply chain. The SMSD warehouse in Mülheim/Ruhr was chosen as the central logistics hub for all customer-engineered parts in the widest range of processing steps and as a buffer warehouse for unexpected consumption fluctuations. After close first article supervision, only one tube manufacturer within a short driving distance qualified for all small welded precision steel tubes. Only one certified partner was included in the process chain for all mechanical processing steps and one for the surface finish. Ring-structured traffic flows with short transport routes and the use of positive economies of scale through campaign production of optimized insertion tubes for different installed components successfully rounded out the measures.
 
All processes are subject to the strictest quality assurance measures as stipulated by automotive standards. This has meanwhile allowed Salzgitter Mannesmann Stahlhandel to operate the initiated series supply to Dorel Juvenile and its component builders absolutely smoothly and reliably.