Moog’s facility in Luxembourg is the Center of Product Responsibility for producing integrated hydraulic manifold systems and hydraulic components such as cartridge valve technology, servocartridges and pilot valves. In January 2006, all Moog Luxembourg moved to the new facility near Bettembourg, a small town in the south of Luxembourg with easy highway access near the French and German border. Moog used state-of-the art lean tools to design the production and engineering facilities. The goal is to improve the lead times for customers from design to finished products.
Benefits of the New Facility
The previous facility had many operation challenges due to three different buildings separated from a parking zone. Now the facility is an optimised 3,720 m2 (40,000 square foot) production surface and 1,360 m2 (14,500 square foot) office area designed to run the business with more productivity, better quality, and higher flexibility.
In 2003, the new facility was designed using lean tools such as process mapping and value stream analysis. The goal was to create a straight material flow from goods receiving through to shipping. Now a new basis is created for continuous improvements with the short term goal of a big gain in productivity due to better layouts, improved processes and simplified material flows.
As a part of Moog’s industrial business, it was also important to plan for growth, flexibility, and future expansion.
Investments
Moog made capital investments in two new hydraulic test aggregates for a total of 10 test benches with an increased flow-capacity up to 1,200 l/min (320 gpm) enabling more throughput in production. Two new multi-axis CNC machining centres will allow us to develop better customised system solutions and our wide range of cartridge and pilot valve technology.
Other features of the facility include:
- A new air-conditioning and heating system that will provide a 2/3 reduction in energy costs.
- A focus on waste management for Moog and its suppliers and customers. The goal is to reach the Luxembourg “green” waste label.
- Different safety protection systems like a sprinkler system in all production zones to ensure business continuity.
Summary
The new facility will be a big step forward to meet our customers requested leadtimes with the best prices and highest quality. It also will help create the best possible working environment for the Moog team in Luxembourg.
Author
Markus Paule was one of the project leaders responsible for designing and building the new facility. He works in production engineering and is responsible for production planning as well as Lean and value stream management. In 1997, he started as a hydraulic engineer at Moog and supported different customers as well as the production in Luxembourg. In 2003, he participated in the Lean facilitator training, Markus studied mechanical engineering with a specialty in Hydraulics at Fachhochschule Niederrhein in Krefeld.