Competition

Process and deadlines

Complete and submit questionnaire: by 30 June 2021

Selection of finalists: July 2021

Visits to finalists’ locations: July – August 2021

Selection of winners: September 2021

Individual evaluation reports for all participants: November 2021

Presentation of the Factory of the Year awards: March 2022

The competition is open to manufacturing companies in any industry sector. They can submit applications for factories and business units. Taking part is free of charge. The number of employees should be at least 100.

You must complete the questionnaire to take part in the competition. Typically, the questionnaire takes 5-10 days to complete. The better your company data is already organized, the easier it is to transfer it to the questionnaire.

Once the completed questionnaires have been thoroughly evaluated, the competition finalists are selected and will receive an on-site visit by Factory of the Year representatives for an assessment.

The Factory of the Year competition’s jury panel will then select the winners. To win, contenders have to demonstrate outstanding performance or exceptional creativity in specific competition categories.

The winners will be announced at the end of September and published in the industry journal Produktion. Winners will be visited by a Produktion editor and profiled in detail in a special year-end edition of the magazine.

The prizes will be awarded in March next year at the annual Factory of the Year conference.

You can download the questionnaire here.

The winners will be selected in two stages. Participating companies must complete a detailed questionnaire, which can be requested online. Taking part in the competition is free of charge.

The questionnaire asks for quantitative and qualitative information on typical factory performance data across the value chain. Leading award contenders are chosen based on this information and will receive a visit from an experienced Kearney audit team. The competition jury panel, comprising prominent experts from industry and research, then selects the winners on the basis of the questionnaire and the audit team’s on-site findings.

Parallel to this, all participants receive a detailed evaluation in the form of a confidential feedback report, which details their position in the competition and highlights possible improvement potential. We look forward to receiving your application!

Benefits

Industrial companies can only benefit from taking part in the Factory of the Year competition. Clearly, winning a prestigious award like Factory of the Year is hugely motivating for employees. But any business, irrespective of whether it actually picks up an award, can gain from taking part. In addition, it’s free.

As participants have noted, time and again, the process of completing the questionnaire alone can draw attention to weaknesses in a company’s performance. All businesses taking part receive a detailed, confidential evaluation, that tells them how they ranked in comparison with companies with which they share a similar starting position. Shortlisted candidates receive a visit from an experienced Kearney audit team and are given initial expert feedback. And the Factory of the Year event offers an ideal opportunity to share ideas and learn the secrets behind the successes scored by the best in the competition.

As part of the “Factory of the Year” there will be our annual Startup Challenge. Three founder teams get the opportunity to pitch their solutions and ideas for production in front of the audience of the congress.

At the end, they can vote for the startup with the best solution. The winner will receive an award.

Please apply here.

Schedule

April 1, 2021: application deadline
end of March, 2021: you will be informed if you are allowed to participate in the preselection
end of April 2021: preselection (video pitch)
22-23 June 2021: the best 3 startups pitch at the congress

Past winners

2020: semodia

2019: Wandelbots

2018: KINEXON

Factory of the Year

• Excellence in the factory
• Strong KPIs and dynamic improvement across all performance dimensions

GEO Award

• Excellence throughout the value chain
• Exceptional value creation

Excellent Big Series Assembly

• Lean
• Short processing times
• Exceptional supply performance

Excellent Small Series Assembly

• Mastery of complexity
• Make to order or engineer to order

Excellent Production Network

• Exploitation of locations’ individual strengths
• Clearly defined location expertise profiles
• Global outlook and approach

Excellent Location Safeguarding by Digitalization

• Targeted use of digitalization solutions to boost efficiency

Excellent Location Development

• Continuous location development
• Investment in future technologies
• Employee development

Best Startup

The winners of the Startup Challenge succeeded in inspiring the conference audience with their vision of the factory of tomorrow. The Best Startup category is about creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and disruptive thinking – in anything from networked production solutions to robotics and process management.