Operational Transformation Project

Establishing a Shanghai Prototyping Hub to Accelerate Delivery and Reduce Costs.

Knorr-Bremse’s prototypes were historically produced in Spain and Australia, resulting in:

• High travel and temporary relocation costs

• Long development cycles and operational inefficiencies

• Limited responsiveness to customer timelines

• Dependency on remote teams and non-scalable processes

This model created unnecessary cost burdens (~400K USD + annually) and slowed the ability to support new customer programs. The organization required a local, efficient, and standardized prototyping center to accelerate delivery and strengthen regional competitiveness.

I designed and led the implementation of a dedicated prototyping line inside the Shanghai production center, enabling full in-house development and seamless transition to serial production.

Key solution elements included:

• Applying Design for Manufacturing (DFM) to simplify prototype builds

• Implementing Lean, Kanban, and Just-in-Time workflows

• Standardizing processes for repeatability and documentation quality

• Designing a structured transfer-to-production model aligned with serial manufacturing standards

This solution transformed prototyping into a local, Lean, and cost-effective process supporting global product development.