Silo thinking? – Not at MAE!

"I'm not interested in what my colleague from assembly does!"

Have you ever heard this sentence or similar statements in your company?

At MAE. we actively work against silo thinking in order to prevent such attitudes from arising in the first place and to reduce repetitive coordination efforts. Close cooperation between departments is essential for sustainable corporate success. Knowing the problems of the other departments in the company makes it possible to adapt one's own working methods so that the requirements of the departments downstream in the process can be addressed directly.

At MAE., employees routinely shadow employees in non-specialist departments in order to better understand their work processes and challenges. Most recently, our design engineer Felix spent time in the mechanical assembly department. Here he was able to accompany the complete assembly cycle of a machine and test the assemblability of newly developed assemblies himself.

Felix will be able to incorporate the experience and "aha moments" he has gained directly into the development and design of new assemblies in the future.

In addition to the professional exchange, job shadowing also helps to bring employees from different departments closer together, to get to know each other better on a personal level and thus to strengthen the team spirit. In our view, job shadowing is an ideal opportunity to counteract silo thinking in the company and to promote mutual understanding, knowledge transfer within the teams and a cooperative corporate culture.