Lebus International Engineers GmbH has opened a second production hall at its premises in Finning, near Munich, Germany. The 900m² assembly hall increases production capacity by more than 30%.
Fitted with a pair of 10t capacity overhead cranes, the new hall is being used for assembling spooling devices and compensators, and for mounting and bolting flanges to drums. It is also used for stocking cast drums and half-produced parts. It frees up the main hall to be dedicated to machining and for expansion of the paint shop. The new building also houses additional office space, washroom and canteen facilities, and a lecture room for customer training events. The adjacent land has also been purchased for future expansion.
Further investment in the business has also been made in new CNC machines and management systems. Approximately €100,000 has been invested in sophisticated Incoplan software from Incotec that manages the planning of all resources, scheduling, production and delivery.
Lebus’ German operations are bucking the trend in the worldwide economic downturn and so far there has been little or no slowdown in workload. While the drop in global demand for construction cranes has resulted in some postponements of high-volume/low-margin orders from tower crane and mobile crane manufacturers, other end-user industries such as offshore and mining have so far proved more resilient.
Consultancy work is also flourishing, as increasingly more winch, hoist and crane users turn to Lebus for independent advice on resolving their wire rope spooling problems.