4 Title Title 5

Festo Global Footprint

Global market supply of Festo

GPC: Global Production Centre

RSC: Regional Service Centre

1 GPC Berkheim 7 GPC Ceska Lipa

new building 2004: Czech Republic
Electronics manufacturing plant
Scharnhausen
Germany 7
2
1

10 GPC Simferopol
2 GPC Rohrbach 3 8 new building 2007 8 GPC Budapest
RSC Europa 5 4 10 Ukraine Hungary
Germany

9
13

3 GPC Aarau 9 GPC Sofia

Switzerland new building 2002
Bulgaria

11

12
4 GPC Biel 12 RSC Asean
new building 2003 new building 2002
Switzerland Singapore

6 GPC Sao~ Paulo

RSC SAM 11 GPC Bangalore
Brazil India

6
5 GPC NAFTA 13 GPC Shanghai
RSC NAFTA new construction 2007
Hauppauge (New York) China
USA

How does Festo manage to produce
23,000 different products and deliver
them promptly in 176 countries around
the world? The answer: by using a global
market supply strategy which allows the
organisational unit Order Fulfilment
Management to target the best possible
way of supplying 300,000 customers
worldwide. The task: optimising the glob-
al production, purchasing and logistics
network. This in turn is made up of many
complex individual tasks, including the
optimum utilisation of production sites
People 4/2006
worldwide; the use of specialised local
expertise; materials management and
purchasing; hand-in-hand co-operation
with development and sales; rapid logis-
tics, and last but not least, continuous
adaptation to market changes and the
growth of Festo. And all this while main-
taining tip-top product quality.
Business is increasingly going global.
Goods are sent around the world in days,
and information in a matter of minutes.
Customers can choose between compa-
nies competing worldwide. This means
greater demands on Festo in terms of the
“With the “Festo Global Foot-
print” strategy, we are setting
the course for the future. The
fields of action are regionalisa-
tion, supply chain orientation,
and capacity utilisation.”
Dr. Ekkehard Gericke
O, OF
speed and stability of its market supply
chains, from materials acquisition right
through to the customer. The ability to
deliver when needed thus becomes a key
factor for the market success of Festo. In
the same way, as a globally positioned
company Festo can also make use of the
regional advantages of its various loca-
tions, such as cost advantages or areas of
specialist skills, as well as the possibili-
ties of a globally networked IT structure.
To surmount these challenges within the
framework of the corporate strategy of
Festo, the “Festo Global Footprint” strat-
egy has been developed, fields of activity
and the strategies and measures to be
taken in those fields in the coming years.
“Global footprint” is a specialist term
referring to an analysis of what advan-
tages and what expertise is to be found
in each particular location and source of
supply within an international corpora-
tion. The distribution of tasks and func-
tions among worldwide locations chosen
by Festo can be viewed metaphorically
as a global footprint of its production,
purchasing and logistics network on the
world’s surface. The most important fields
of activity are: reinforcing regionalisation,
thinking and acting in integrated supply
chains, and maximum utilisation of exist-
ing production and purchasing capacities.
The regionalisation field of activity is used
here as an example to illustrate the Festo
Global Footprint. Generally speaking, it
is more cost-effective to manufacture a
high-volume product at one location and
not at several. That means on the other
hand longer delivery times for worldwide
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6 Title
shipping and higher transport costs than
with decentralised manufacture. Region-
al manufacture or even warehousing, to
supply the major markets of Europe, Asia
and North and South America for exam-
ple, is therefore more advantageous in
terms of logistics. Festo therefore pursues
a two-stage strategy: products to meet
all global demand are produced in GPCs
of Festo (Global Production Centres), and
are then stored in regional warehouses
(RSCs = Regional Service Centres) to
ensure the shortest possible delivery
times for customers. One of the fields of
activity in the Festo Global Footprint strat-
egy is to spur on this regionalised
approach to market supply by expanding
the Regional Service Centres (RSCs).
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Title 7
The Festo corporation is growing, both in
existing markets and also by opening up
new growth markets, for example in Asia.
The Festo Global Footprint strategy iden-
tifies where expansion is needed and
creates an advance plan for the next few
years. For instance, to enable the Chinese
and Asian market to be supplied with
shorter delivery times, a new GPC is cur-
rently being built in Shanghai (China). In
Eastern Europe the GPC Simferopol is
“The clearly
currently extended. Further examples of defined goals of the
GPCs and RSCs makes
expansion in the international production
Festo more competitive
network are shown on the map on pages and more successful
in the long run.”
4 and 5.
Dr. Vitcho Vitchev
GM Festo Production Sofia
In addition, Festo is pursuing a new strat-
egy of “lead plants”. Each lead plant has
the expertise and the responsibility to be With its history of success, Festo has a
long tradition of thinking internationally
and acting globally. The Festo Global
“The “lead plant” structure
clearly defines where responsi- Footprint represents a commitment to
bilities lie for developing the
the individual locations of Festo with their
necessary production facilities
in the global production particular advantages while simultane-
network of Festo.”
ously networking resources internation-
Anton Thomaser
OF-B
ally, capitalising on regional opportunities.
The goal behind it all is to be “Best of
class in market supply”, ahead of the
“best of class” for the product group or competition with minimal costs and max-
technology assigned to it, providing lead- imum customer satisfaction. A familiar
ership for all competition-relevant param- phrase sums it up: “Think globally, act
eters such as delivery times and quality. locally”.
For each product group and technology
red.
there is just one Global Production Cen-
tre (GPC) in the world that takes on this
“lead plant” function. Lead plants there-
by have the task of establishing a com-
petitive market supply strategy worldwide
for their products and production tech-
nology. These kinds of global networks
can only work through efficient commu-
nication, supported by SAP-based IT tools
like APO or CTM.
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