SEAT wins the Manufacturing Factory Excellence Award 2017 – Video
The SEAT factory in Martorell has won another distinction. The Manufacturing Excellence Award celebration, considered one of the gold standards for benchmarking performance across a range of manufacturing categories which each year rewards manufacturers for their innovative solutions, ranked the superior performance of the Martorell factory with the Manufacturing Excellence Award 2017 in the category of Logistics and Logistics Network Management. The jury recognised the plant’s high level of supplier management and internal logistics.
Aimed at identifying and driving best practices in industry, the MX-Awards benefit from the participation of an expert panel of judges. Since 2004, and following three decades of organisation in the United Kingdom, this prestigious initiative is led by the Technical University of Berlin and the Technical University of Aachen in Germany.
SEAT Vice-President for Production Dr. Andreas Tostmann pointed out that “we are very proud that the judges of this edition praised the innovations applied in recent years in the Martorell factory. I would especially like to acknowledge all our employees, whose commitment and dedication have enabled positioning SEAT as a benchmark for both the automotive sector and for industry in general”.
In order to win this distinction, the SEAT plant in Martorell successfully passed a complete audit and monitoring procedure of its processes in recent months. The assessment stage prior to granting the awards consists in two parts: first the companies’ applications are evaluated and the best candidates are shortlisted. Once selected, stringent on-site audits are performed by independent experts, who choose and identify the best projects in each category.
This new distinction again puts SEAT in the spotlight of the major brands of European industry. Martorell is the largest car factory in Spain in terms of production volume, with a daily output of over 2,200 units of the new Ibiza and Arona, the Leon facelifted and the Audi Q3. In recent years it has been distinguished on several occasions, such as with the Lean Award 2013, the Lean & Green Management Award 2015 and the Fabrik des Jahres 2016, which certify it as one of the most efficient factories in the European automotive industry.
SEAT is tackling the challenge of Industry 4.0 with the goal of digitising the Martorell factory. This involves boosting the digitisation of processes with innovations such as the use of smartglasses, exoskeletons or autonomous, collaborative robots, among others. SEAT’s Martorell factory employs more than 7,000 workers and has a surface area greater than 2.8 million square metres.