Rouven Popp

Rouven combines Transformation Consultant experience, including the local management of global Lean initiatives, with extensive line management experience implementing lean improvement projects. 

He started his career as a consultant in a turnaround and lean consultancy company and was promoted to project leader.  In his corporate career he implemented lean initiatives and cost reduction projects in several sites in Germany.  He was selected to maximise the implementation in Poland of the ramp up of a new assembly site and had full line management responsibility for logistics.  Subsequently promoted to production manager, he managed all the site’s troublesome lines while developing his successors and ensured they were aligned and in flow.

Rouven is a passionate user of the Kaizen methodology and has personally facilitated hundreds of Kaizen and other CI workshops.  In all situations stabilizing processes and eliminating waste was key, both shop floor and transactional. He received an innovation award from GKN for the achieved efficiency increase of the land flap production line, as a team success, doubling the output with same team and equipment of an existing product in 2 years.  This increased efficiency by over 100% because of the effect of other improvements.

OTHER SELECTED RESULTS:

  • Mapping and improvement of complex end-to-end Value Streams including sites in Germany and the Czech Republic

    • 60% reduction of inventory in the walk behind production, achieved by running 3 Kaizen events and setting up a “Fax-Kanban” between the sites which was easy to handle and accepted by everyone  

  • 3 months workshops to focus on value adding work content in the white goods industry

    • Double the value adding work percentage 

    • 35% increase in efficiency by rebalancing the assembly line

    • 30 FTE cost saving

  • Shared resources focused projects

    • 35% increase in OEE in milling and paint shop in 1 year

  • Material utilization and waste in raw material reduction

    • €750k annual reduction in raw material waste within 2 years and 10 workshops 

  • Improvement of internal and external logistics and materials management 

    • 30% faster access in the warehouse, better supply to all lines and 10 FTE cost reduction via optimization of warehouse usage: 

      • Faster access to standard products

      • Standardization of the warehouse racks

      • Supplier integration in reusable packaging system

    • Implementation of several train and milk-runs to remove forklifts from the assembly area 

    • Supplier development in video workshops to get all parts sorted direct from Asia

Anthony Collins