Lego Manufacturing focus
Building on a long heritage
Manufacturing and Logistics IT, in association with Meet The Boss TV, presents a special interview with Legoʼs CEO Jørgen VigKnudstorp about maintaining the profile of an
internationally recognised brand and how white boards can still play a positive role in the digital age.
T 6
he Lego Group is a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. It is still owned by the Kirk Kristiansen family who founded it in 1932 and remains
dedicated to developing children’s creativity through playing and learning. Based on the world-famous Lego brick, the company still
continues to provide toys and teaching materials for children in more than 130 countries. The group has approximately 8000 employees and is the world’s fifth largest manufacturer of play materials. Lego’s Jørgen VigKnudstorp explains that Lego’s vision is based on the Lego brick, “that’s our heritage and our future”. However, in this increasingly high-tech marketplace, just how important are these values? “They are extremely important and sometimes when I speak about our vision I call it a 2.2 version of the Lego group because Lego actually began in a carpenter’s shop,” he explained. “It was a wooden toy, and only with the emergence of plastics after World War II in Europe did Lego become a global pioneer in plastic intrusion, and that of course became the future of the company from early 1960s and onwards. If you like you
Jørgen VigKnudstorp: “It’s important that quality is not occasionally right but consistently right in every print.”
MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS
IT October 2010
could call that ‘Lego 2.0’. So when we talk about the digital age I talk about a ‘2.2 version’ of Lego to signify that we’re not leaving the physical grid behind us, but we’re taking the best learning and continuing with that as our mainstay and core business.” Nevertheless, VigKnudstorp is keen to stress that Lego is adding influences from the digital revolution to this proven methodology. “I think the values that we were building through the physical plane will also remain in the digital space because they have turned out to be extremely relevant even in the 21st century,” he remarked.
Social mechanism
So, in the digital age, just how do Lego executives formulate the company’s forward- looking business and product values? “Well it starts with a lot of dialogue, and with trying to get the buy-in – trying to build a ‘coalition’ that’s strong enough and powerful enough to start getting the momentum going to do things,” said VigKnudstorp. “For instance in
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