It is wintertime in 2015, when Marius Guffarth arrives in the Finnish town of Ekenäs. He is tasked with introducing the Geberit Production System at the newly acquired ceramics plant. For this purpose, the qualified engineer spends almost two years at the Finnish plant. He first analyses existing processes, organises GPS workshops and turns the flow of material completely on its head by introducing both optimised and entirely new processes. The GPS specialist convinces his Finnish colleagues of the benefits of the new approach. Together, they manage to increase productivity by 12 per cent in the first year alone. The cold start in the Finnish winter is thus quickly forgotten.

"The relatively modest investment in the supermarket has had a major effect. We have been able to increase productivity in the packaging areas by 20% while reducing the storage space required by one-third."

The material flow at the ceramics plant in Gaeta in southern Italy was characterised by long distances, half-full pallets and a lack of overall coherence. The situation is now being rectified by a newly established “ceramics supermarket”. Following quality control, all ceramic sanitary appliances that have been given the green light are now sent directly to this supermarket, where they are clearly sorted. As soon as enough appliances of the same type are available to fill a full pallet, they are taken from the supermarket and packaged. The result is a highly efficient, direct and simply structured flow of material.