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Teardown Center - MCE Academy

Benchmarking  & Teardown

 

More than 75% of the manufacturing costs of a truck is determined by the purchased parts and components. One of the big challenges in developing a truck is to keep the price of those parts as low as possible while ensuring maximum quality. The Benchmarking & Teardown Center within DAF provides more insights in. To ensure that more employees become more cost-conscious and learn more about the principles of benchmarking, intensive training is provided

"We do a benchmark for every single component in the truck, which allows us to crate transparency. Ultimately, this ensures that we are able to obtain the best design with the best materials at the lowest possible rate and thus achieve serious cost savings,” begins Hans Heijmans, Manager Benchmarking & Teardown and coordinator of the Material Cost Excellence (MCE) Academy. “In order to make our own employees more cost-conscious and learn them more about benchmarking, we started the Material Cost Excellence Academy in 2016.”

The Material Cost Excellence Academy
PACCAR employees can participate in the Material Cost Excellence (MCE) Academy. A training course specifically designed to learn employees all the ins and outs in areas such as benchmarking and target costing. Both from a commercial and technical perspective. Different parts and materials from (international) suppliers are studied in order to determine how the smartest designs and the best parts can be used. Of course at the best cost. Next to the theory, the participants are mixed in groups and work at an assignment. Although the program originally started in Eindhoven, colleagues from other countries can also participate at the program. 

Multidisciplinary collaboration
"The strength of this training lies in bridging various disciplines within DAF,” says Hans. "By creating multidisciplinary teams of buyers, engineers and financial people, we stimulate integral thinking. The topic does not always have to be about price, negotiation or development. But when you work in multidisciplinary teams, you see it from different perspectives and is it more likely that you see the bigger picture. In the end, this will lead to an optimal solution with good quality materials. Another important aspect of the training is that participants get the chance to work with real parts. This makes is tangible for them. Also, former participants take care of the different modules according to the trainer’s trainer principle.”

Quality first
Hans emphasizes that DAF certainly does not want to choose the cheapest option. "Quality is and remains extremely important within our organization. Something which we also highlight in the training. Further, this training creates added value within our company and is in line with our PPS (PACCAR Production System) philosophy, where we strive for continuous improvement. And not entirely unimportant, from what I’ve heard the participants themselves are also very enthusiastic and they are very willing to transfer their new knowledge to colleagues."

If you want to know more about training and development at DAF, you can read more here. If you want to learn more about our Purchasing department, go here.