We are Sesotec: The Work Planning – A Look Behind the Scenes

Work planning plays a central role in our company. It is the engine that keeps our processes efficient and ensures that we can deliver high-quality products to our customers in a short time. Today, we take a look at the impressive achievements of work planning – and at the colleagues behind it. Benjamin Selwitschka, Team Leader Work Planning at Sesotec, talks in an interview about his work and the challenges his team faces.

Sure! A very exciting project was converting the production of a metal separator's discharge housing to our welding robot. The goal was to reduce manufacturing costs – with great success.

Coordination with the various departments – production, design, and purchasing – was one of the central tasks. We had to ensure that the transition worked smoothly and without production interruptions. We also adjusted the work schedules and material master data. Stefan Krause took the lead and executed it very well together with Andreas Bergmann.

Customer satisfaction is, of course, our top priority in work planning.

Important for the customer and his planning is, among other things, timely information or confirmation of the delivery date for his order. To sustainably meet this customer requirement, there are two key figures regarding order processing in work planning:

Firstly, On Time Delivery, abbreviated as OTD. This is the percentage of customer orders that were processed within one day.

And secondly, the lead time. This is the processing time of a customer order in work planning.

Another major goal of work planning is to reduce production costs and shorten delivery times through efficient and streamlined work processes.

Within the framework of KVP Engineering – KVP stands for Continuous Improvement Process – cost savings in production are pursued and implemented together with our colleagues from the design and industrial engineering departments.

Absolutely! A task that is often overlooked, among other things, is bill of materials changes. The colleagues – consisting of Stefan Friedl, Stefan Krause, Manuel Biller, Markus Joachimsthaler, Andre Tolksdorf, Michael Köstlmeier, and Matthias Gell – adjust thousands of bill of materials items every year. This task is essential to ensure that the production departments are supplied with the right components at the right time.

In this context, I would like to point out additional tasks that are ensured on a daily basis for the smooth operation, among other things, in the production areas. 

For example, there is the preliminary calculation of materials and the handling of inquiries from our service, which are implemented and managed by colleagues Robert Gruber and Manuel Biller. 

Time recordings are an important component in ensuring realistic standard times in the production areas. Here, Georg Fuchs is an important employee with his decades of REFA experience. 

A correct order closure is also an essential part of order processing. Here, Margit Roth and Bettina Richter perform valuable work.

As a final point, I would like to mention the creation of work instructions for our production areas. In this process, documents are created by the Work Planning department in cooperation with Development, which, in combination with drawings and circuit diagrams, ensure smooth and high-quality device production.

We work with our SAP software and the work queues and transactions it offers. Furthermore, we use transparent checklists and measures lists, which we review and update in regular meetings. These tools help us keep track and document everything in a traceable manner.

Work planning is the backbone of many processes that are often not directly visible. But we work daily to ensure that our successes – such as the savings through the introduction of robots or the high delivery reliability – become visible. It is important to us to create transparency and to show that dedicated people stand behind every success. Work planning focuses on strategic issues that strengthen our competitiveness and are crucial for the future.

Thank you, Bensch, for the exciting insights!

Want to become part of our team? The work planning at Sesotec plays a central role in our efficiency and product quality – and we are always looking for motivated colleagues who want to shape the future with us.