Outsourcing to sheltered workshops

Demand for our systems from across the horticulture and solar industries has been soaring in recent years. This came with several challenges: 

• How do we optimise production to meet growing demand?
• How do we respond to suddenly rising or dropping demand?
• How do we spread risks?
• Do we scale up or outsource? And what consequences will that have?

And the underlying question was always this: how do we do all of that while taking our corporate social responsibility?

The answer turned out to be as beautiful as it is effective: outsourcing to sheltered workshops.

‘We were already somewhat familiar with outsourcing to sheltered workshops, but have taken it to another level in terms of professionalism over the past years. Every month, we now have around 300 persons working for us at various outsourcing sites. Factoring in part-time workers, this means that there are around 150 persons working for us every day.

They generally do assembly work, but also material sawing and punching and packaging work. We currently do business with six different sheltered workshops, each with their own specialist capabilities. And they are all within a 20km radius from our premises in Monster. This allows to do our bit for society on a regional level.’

‘Three years ago, we outsourced assembly of 250,000 “Valk products” to sheltered workshops every month. Today, that’s around 1,000,000 products. So, as long as our business keeps growing, they will, as far as we’re concerned, grow with us!’

See below what motivates Marcel van der Voort (Van der Valk Systemen) and René van der Gaag (Den Haag Werkt) to work together. And see our outsourcing colleagues at work!