COMPETITIVENESS

Viscofan has implemented a continuous improvement process at its operations, whereby its productive centres possess a structure that balances cost competitiveness and technological expertise.

Low-cost sites, as their structures grow or their inflationary environment increases in comparison with other more developed economies, lose cost competitiveness, which is offset by the technological improvements that they receive via the best practices and process automation from the centres of excellence, which in turn feeds back to the system of transferring non-competitive capacity to low-cost sites due to their lower technological content or lower value as perceived by customers.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

By freeing up non-competitive capacity at its centres of excellence, Viscofan also frees up resources earmarked for striving for new levels of excellence, via technological breakthroughs that involve new best practice benchmarks and benefit the continuous improvement model.

The Cáseda plant in Spain is the centre of excellence for cellulose casings and the Weinhein plant in Germany is the centre of excellence for collagen. The Danville plant in the United States specialises in the production of fibrous casings and the production of plastics is carried out at the Ceske Budejovice site in the Czech Republic and the Sao Paulo site in Brazil.