OREANDA-NEWS. A tripartite cooperation agreement valid till 2015 was signed between OJSC KAMAZ, OAO Severstal and JSC Russian Railways in Naberezhnye Chelny.

The decision to sign this agreement was taken after the successful implementation of the project “Creation of Standard Procurement Management System” introduced by Yury Klochkov, First Deputy General Director of OJSC KAMAZ – CEO. The project was based on the notion of “pull” production which means that the volume and term of production at each manufacturing stage depend on the needs at subsequent stages (and, in the long run, customers’ requirements). This project enabled to halve losses in procurement processes and speed up supplies of metal-roll from Cherepovets to KAMAZ’s enterprises by 30%.

Last year, more than 125 representatives of RZD and Severstal visited the production facilities and offices of KAMAZ. They learned how the company uses lean manufacturing principles and implements Production System KAMAZ (PSK) at conveyors and in offices, attended lean workshops, and managed to receive answers to all questions they asked. Besides, the meetings of the working group were held at the Cherepovets Integrated Iron and Steel Works (CherMK).

According to Yury Klochkov, the partners managed to save time of railroad transportation between Severstal and KAMAZ and on the companies’ territory. In 2012, the total volume of metal-roll delivered to KAMAZ from Cherepovets increased by more than 4 times, and the whole period of its transportation to Naberezhnye Chelny reduced by 2.2 times – from 19.3 to 8.7 days. The economic effect from this project exceeded all expectations. “Thanks to the faster delivery of cargoes by rail, lowered advance payments and expenses, we managed to save more than 121 million roubles,” KAMAZ’s CEO calculated. “This is the first successful practice in Russia when “pull” production is used to build logistics between a supplier and an end customer with the participation of Russian Railways.”

As a result, the parties agreed to continue cooperating in order to improve production processes using lean manufacturing tools. The partners will share their know-how in quality assurance, lean production technologies application, personnel motivation, and production systems development. Besides, the companies jointly organize lean trainings for their employees.

In his turn, Valentin Gapanovich, Senior Vice-President at JSCo RZD, noted that the project of that kind had been realized at JSCo RZD for the first time. According to him, in the course of practical realization of the project with the use of lean manufacturing tools, the company revealed key losses in the process of customer value creation both at the level of a consignor/consignee and at the level of a carrier, so it was actually a comprehensive analysis of the quality of the whole transportation process. “This project showed the efficiency of lean manufacturing technologies used to determine unproductive losses when organizing a transportation process, to enhance efficiency of internal technological processes due to systematic work with a shipper/receiver on cost reduction,” Mr. Gapanovich said.