CGK GROUP AND 24FLOW PUT QRM INTO PRACTICE

“Running a low-volume, high-mix production company is all about managing uncertainty. That’s why you need a set of building blocks that are easy to combine and adapt. And that’s exactly what 24Flow offers.”

Time is money. Nowhere is this as true as in low-volume, high-mix manufacturing.

Just ask CGK, a Belgian-based company that specializes in highly customized, end-to-end solutions for chemical storage and handling. To reduce lead times and boost delivery reliability, CEO Tijl Charle and Operational Manager Antoine Willems decided to make the switch to quick-response manufacturing (QRM). With 24Flow (which is part of the delaware family) they found the perfect digital partner to turn that vision into reality.

Established in 2004, CGK brings together expertise in the production of synthetics/plastics with in-depth knowledge of environmental legislation to provide solutions for the safe storage, treatment and usage of chemicals and dangerous liquids. Its clients include Shell, Alpro, Aquafin, Brenntag, Willy Naessens, and many other prominent businesses across Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

“Making the change from a traditionally hierarchical organization to self-steering teams and QRM doesn’t happen overnight. You have to get everyone on board and make sure that people have easy access to all relevant information while increasing visibility in each other’s work. At the same time, you have to show people their impact and empower them to make changes themselves. That’s exactly what 24Flow does.”

Tijl Charle

CEO CGK Group

CGK 2025

“Our goal is to fully unburden our customers by providing end-to-end solutions that cover the whole spectrum of chemical handling and storage, from piping and dosage to insulation,” says Tijl. “To make this possible, we’ve been focusing heavily on vertical integration. Everything we deliver is custom-made from scratch: we buy the raw materials and manufacture and install the final product ourselves. All these steps require high levels of expertise, but doing everything in-house also enables us to take full ownership and control in every project.”

Tijl’s approach pays off: over the last few years, the company has grown by 10% per year on average. “As a family-owned business, however, we want to make sure we’re growing in a sustainable way,” he adds. “That’s why we developed our CGK 2025 strategy, of which QRM is an essential building block. By focusing on quick-response manufacturing, we can lower our costs, improve our delivery reliability, and create a more attractive work environment.”

A comprehensive wishlist

Together with Operational Manager Antoine Willems, Tijl started exploring how the company should embrace QRM’s principles, such as self-steering project teams, and improve their process flows. “For example, we had to reduce the amount of ‘in-progress’ projects in the workshop to a minimum, and focus on finishing projects instead,” says Antoine. “This requires careful planning, as well as the ability to deal with unexpected setbacks or rush orders. We quickly realized that we would need a digital solution to make this happen.”

To turn its QRM ideas into tangible reality, Tijl and Antoine got in touch with several IT vendors. However, none of them were able to meet all the requirements. “The solution had to be low-code, cloud-based, and built on a well-established platform,” Tijl explains. “It also had to work across all our departments and applications, contain a feature for role-based interfaces, and be scalable enough to grow along with our growth ambitions. No one else was able to cover all of that.”

CGK Group & 24Flow

Go with the 24FLOW

Tijl partnered with Erik Dierinck from 24Flow to create a customizable, Salesforce-based operations platform aligned with QRM principles, embarking on an intensive but rewarding journey to develop a tailored solution as 24Flow’s first client.

Time and capacity

Antoine notes that 24Flow centralized CGK’s capacity planning by integrating schedules and HR data into a single, auto-updated system, allowing project teams to efficiently manage their own schedules and improve throughput.

Improved efficieny

Tijl notes that transitioning to self-steering teams and QRM is gradual, requiring buy-in, accessible information, and visibility into each other’s work. 24Flow supports this by showing employees their impact and empowering them to make changes.

Empowered teams

Empowered employees preemptively resolve bottlenecks, enhancing throughput and ensuring timely customer solutions, which boosts overall efficiency with the same team. Importantly, employee satisfaction has soared as urgencies are managed more calmly and efficiently.

The impact of digital QRM

By adding a digital dimension to their QRM vision with 24Flow, CGK can tap into a host of advantages.

A recent study by Bain & Company, for example, shows that digital lean approaches can double the savings of traditional lean efforts.

Combining digital and lean initiatives can reduce costs by up to 30%!

What's next? An ongoing partnership

So what’s next for CGK and 24Flow? Antoine: “Now that capacity planning has been covered, we’re tackling file management next. We want our people in the field to be able to consult technical documents directly from their mobile phones. We’re also working on automated timesheets for installers and dynamic checklists. The latter will improve safety and quality, for example by making it impossible to move on to the next phase in a project until all safety and quality tests are successfully completed.” In a few years, CGK also wants to set up its own customer portal.

Just like CGK GROUP, Manage uncertainty with the building blocks of 24FLOW

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ABOUT US

24Flow is a modular operations platform that empowers discrete manufacturers to reduce lead times through digital support of operators and management. Inspired by lean and QRM, 24Flow controls the flow of production orders which increases visibility and results in shorter lead times, improved delivery reliability and a reduction of work-in-progress and inventory.

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