A few years ago, 38 employees worked at Tina Skov Andersen’s family-owned business, FLK Cabin in Toftlund. In 2010, 13 are left. It is evident that during the recession, clients limit their purchases of the company’s purpose-built driver’s cabs, e.g. for forklift trucks and mini tractors.
Like other companies, FLK Cabin has to find a way of producing more for the same amount of money or less.
Tina Skov Andersen “does not want to lag behind,” as she puts it. She has spent quite some time wondering how to improve productivity.
Outside help needed
As owner and manager of a company, life is hectic. It was not until she had assistance from outside to put her deliberations into some kind of system that she gained the overview needed to make a decision. Through her industry organisation, Tina Skov Andersen heard about the possibility of having a visit from innovation agents from Force Technology, an Approved Technology Service (GTS) Institute.
“All it would cost was my time, so of course I had to give it a go,” she says and explains that the first meeting with the agents lasted three hours. During this meeting, the company’s challenges and possibilities were discussed.
“Of course we knew already where the shoe pinched, and they understood that,” says Tina Skov Andersen.
The shoe was pinching because of the company’s use of new IT technology. Or rather – their lack of use of IT. The fact was that FLK Cabin had bought a system for 3D design of driver’s cabins, but they had not really started using it, and maybe it was not the most appropriate tool for the job. It was clear that something new had to happen in relation to the use of IT, and that was the decision Tina Skov Andersen ended up making. She expects that man-hours can be saved in production once the design is close to reality in three dimensions.
Hope of greater earnings
The GTS-institute then prepared a project description and this was used to obtain an innovation voucher from the Agency for Research and Innovation for the purchase of knowledge about IT implementation from a knowledge institution.
Tina Skov Andersen hopes that this will provide the necessary input on how to implement the new 3D design.
“I hope it will all lead to greater earnings later on. But right now it is difficult to see where it will all end,” she says.
“It has been crucial to us that we have not had to spend a lot of time on the project, because we have many irons in the fire. It is important that we have had a GTS-institute to keep the project going. Were it not for them, nothing would have happened.”