Wherever superior products get made, craftsmanship is involved. And especially when it’s a matter of special products, careful handling, and specific solutions, human beings with expertise are in demand. Many qualified craftsmen work in the Brunner production facility, many of them with decades of experience, and their know-how and their dexterity assure that Brunner furniture is what it is: high-quality, functional, long-lasting.

Experts for quality:
A good example for work processes that can only be performed manually and cannot be replaced by a machine can be found in the upholstery: here they test whether the upholstery material selected by the client is really appropriate for the respective intended use. Does it have the right properties for the desired object? Is it able to fulfill practical demands? The underlying surfaces are prepared here as well – which means that supporting and elastic parts are being produced and assembled. In the case of the conference easy chair tempus, rubber belts are inserted into the seat in order to provide even more seating comfort.
Another task of the upholsterers is the cutting, upholstering and assembling. This calls for a lot of dexterity and at the same time a lot of strength – especially during the upholstery proper. You need a lot of feeling for the material in order to create exactly the right tension.Thomas Hogenmüller, Head of Upholstery Development and a master upholsterer for 13 years, adds: “This craftsmanship calls for inner calm – especially when working on the details, e.g. the fine seams.” And there is in fact a lot of this detailed work: “For tempus, we work with welts”, Hogenmüller explains, “that is a line sewn into the original fabric which is introduced here between backrest and frame, thus creating a clean edge. And this has to be done with a particular amount of care.” Being careful is the highest priority anyway for the master upholsterer – just like for the other approximately 80 employees working in the Brunner upholstery.

Efficient processes
Traditional craftsmanship plus innovative technology and efficient processes– for Brunner, this is no contradiction but a very advantageous combination. For as CEO Mark Brunner puts it: “Only when you test the traditional and combine it with the new, you can successfully act as a company.” And so in order to ensure outstanding quality, everyone continually works on optimizing the processes. For this purpose, the company also got external advice by Porsche-Consulting. In the course of the optimizing process called “ImProve!”, all production processes have been checked since 2009, and a lot of measures have been initiated. Here, work chains e.g. ensure automatic controlling processes, so that quality assurance is directly integrated into the production process. And even delivery times could again be shortened. Heiko Ehret, Project Leader for "ImProve!", sees the practical benefits: “The process optimization brings us additional flexibility: today we’re working with mobile assembly blocks – small machine parks on coasters that can be put together where they are needed, depending on which model gets produced. That way we can react to order peaks even faster and with even less effort.” Which is important, since Brunner doesn’t produce stock, only according to order. And with the large number of different models, this calls for enormous flexibility in production. A precondition for the functioning of such flexible systems is, however, a high level of staff qualification. That’s why in all Brunner production departments, from the upholstery through cabinet making, 80% of employees possess the know-how to manufacture 80% of the models. It is this professional flexibility that makes an efficient job rotation at all possible.