Family business Theben optimizes its purchasing

Even old things prove their worth

Haigerloch, Baden-Wuerttemberg, 21.02.2019 – Theben AG of Baden-Wuerttemberg has recently optimized its purchasing. They were supported by the purchasing consultancy Kloepfel Consulting. Founded in 1921, the family-owned company with over 700 employees worldwide is a leading provider of intelligent solutions in the Smart Home and Smart Energy sector.

With regard to its innovative and competitive strength, Theben AG has now sustainably reduced its procurement costs and simplified its internal and external purchasing processes.

Besides the high procurement costs for strategic materials, the purchasing department of Theben AG must also keep an eye on adherence to delivery dates, prices and quality in procurement. The other major challenges of the project were the volatile raw material prices and the rising order intake.

“The optimization project not only enabled us to reduce costs, but also to optimize our processes sustainably in order to gain more time in everyday purchasing for strategically important tasks,” reports Thomas Sprauer, purchasing manager at Theben AG.

“We quickly noticed that we needed an intensive and individually adapted communication effort to pick up all partners and get them enthusiastic about the optimization project. In the end, the Kloepfel team did a very good job here,” says Sprauer.

“You don’t always have to change suppliers to cut costs. There is a lot of potential in the negotiations with existing suppliers and in the optimization of processes alone,” summarizes Kevin Kleemann, senior consultant at Kloepfel Consulting.

As a result the purchasing costs of Theben AG could be considerably reduced through supplier research, tenders, workshops and negotiations. In addition to various overhead cost issues (e.g. office supplies, insurance, marketing and trade fair construction), the areas of packaging, stamped and turned parts, electrical components and logistics were also optimized.

At the same time, Theben AG should be disturbed as little as possible in its day-to-day business. This effort was successfully managed by the energetic support of all employees and partners. In addition, the external employees of Kloepfel Consulting sat in an office together with the purchasing department during the entire project. Thus many topics could be discussed on the short official way. Through the time spent together, a homogeneous team developed, which in turn had a positive effect on the joint negotiations.

To ensure sustainable savings, the purchasers were also further qualified in the preparation and implementation of tenders and negotiations.

About Theben AG

Theben AG is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of digital and analogue time switches, motion and presence detectors, room and clock thermostats and components for KNX building system technology. Worldwide, the Theben Group employs more than 700 people, 580 of them in Germany. Theben sees its success in its employees and the consistent and targeted expansion of its core competencies.