Some South African manufacturers are going World Class, finds Anton GrUtter
At least some South African companies have taken up the challenge of being internationally competitive, a Japanese authority in the field of World Class Manufacturing (WCM) has found
Far from finding a devastated industry, Takeyuki Furuhashi from Chu-San-Ren, a Nagoya-based industry consultancy service, was impressed with the attitude of the people in some of the South African companies he visited.
He commented on how hard they were trying to solve problems, to establish an Africanised way of management, and to upgrade the level of our companies’ competitiveness in the world market.
Indeed, a preoccupation with the notion of being ”World Class” is evident among industrialists. South African industry is struggling to cope with increased competition as foreign companies enter our market and protective barriers are lifted. On the measures used by the World Competitiveness Report our economy features a lowly seventh-last out of 41 countries around the globe.
It was to try to contribute to the building of a healthier local industrial sector that the Manufacturing Roundtable at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business asked Furuhashi to conduct a series of workshops. In preparation, he conducted a fact-finding mission to several local manufacturers.
There is a crucial difference between the locally popular view of WCM and the way Japanese industrialists view it. Rather than seeing it as an end in itself — to be the world’s best manufacturer of a particular kind — they see WCM as a never-ending journey of continuous improvement.
Rather than relying on protection or natural competitive advantage, a Japanese company on the world- class quest will start a process of improvement and rely on the benefits of improved quality, responsiveness to customer needs, and cost- effectiveness to carve out a niche in its market. Ultimately such a process can lead to that company becoming a world leader.
Also, the preferred starting point is on the factory shopfloor rather than in the offices of technical experts. In this way the people who actually produce can contribute to the improvement process.
These people need to be trained in the thinking and methods that have become famous for underpinning the success of Japanese industry.
The emphasis of these methods is invariably on simplicity and rapid feedback to the worker directly involved. Features like these make the approaches particularly appropriate for the democratisation of the South African workplace.
Indeed, evidence of this approach was found among some of the manufacturers visited. Each had a different variation on the theme depending on industry and circumstances, but the basic principle of incremental continuous improvement was to be seen among all of
At rapidly growing industrial electronics manufacturer Plessey Tellumat the focus is on rapid product changes and short delivery times to satisfy the demands of the company’s particular market. Accordingly the shopfloor has been reorganised as flexible production lines that can be easily adapted to the manufacturing requirements of a new product.
At the South African Breweries plant in Chamdor the biggest challenge was to improve the quality of the round-the-clock, but largely invisible, process of fermenting beer. Employees at the plant were delegated to improvement teams, trained in group problem-solving techniques and given the equipment to do simple quality testing themselves while on shift.
The charts proudly displayed on the brewhouse walls attest to the unmistakable improvements in the chemical processes which occur during the brewing process. And they happen to start showing those improvements as the team’s recommended changes took effect.
Diversified packaging manufacturer Nampak has launched a major initiative to familiarise people in their plants with WCM implementation approaches. Due to the wide variety of manufacturing processes employed by the different plants in the company, Nampak has taken the route of ”transferring learning” to people at various levels in the company so that they can then implement improvement initiatives as appropriate for their particular plant.
True to the principle of avoiding the increase of head office experts, the Nampak College is a networking and mentoring concept which mushrooms when delegates are in formal training. When they are back in their factories working on improvement initiatives, the trainers switch to mentoring roles and continue the training process on the shopfloor.
In contrast, at the Chloorkop plant of National Chemical Products there is no high profile WCM programme. Some years ago the company embarked on an initiative to develop ”creative dissatisfaction” among its employees. At one of the units in the plant it led to the teams working shifts on the chemical plant starting their own improvement initiative.
Having been exposed to the Japanese way of thinking from sourcing their production technology from Japan, they developed a method of recording deviations from standard best operating practice in the plant. Analysis and problem-solving by the team followed and has resulted in slow, but steady improvement. Now the company wants to roll this home-grown method out into other parts of their plant.
These companies have started their own unique way of improving their manufacturing performance. To be sure, they are only the few among many companies in South Africa that may not even have heard of WCM, much less taken the first step on the road of continuous improvement. But that there are South African companies that have taken the bit between their teeth augurs
As Furuhashi pointed out to us, the Japanese industrial resurgence started when they implemented their Reconstruction and Development Programme after World War II. Contrary to conventional wisdom, they too had to struggle to achieve broad consensus from the major interest groups in their society before they could implement their improvement programmes. But, once they got going, they did not stop until they were the world’s leading manufacturers.
Anton Grutter is a research associate of the Manufacturing Roundtable at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business