Contact-lens plant makes cheaper, better, faster
work
Every morning, workers at contact lens and lens care-product
maker CIBA Vision are greeted with numbers on a television screen
at the entrance to its Tuas factory.
The numbers reflect the monthly and yearly production-volume
targets for contact lenses. Should the production volume stay on
track, the company's workers would receive an incentive payout for
the year for meeting the target.
These productivity targets, and other performance targets such
as quality, safety and cost, were set after the company's
successful adoption of the National Trades Union Congress' (NTUC)
productivity mantra CBF, which stands for "cheaper, better,
faster".
The labour movement launched the CBF drive last August to get
companies to improve the productivity of every worker at all
levels, as well as their work processes, with new technology.
Yesterday, CIBA Vision's Singapore-based manu- facturing and
logistics plant reported an 82 per cent rise in labour productivity
and a 42 per cent increase in machine productivity over the past
five years.
This increase in output was achieved after taking "bottleneck-
breaking" initiatives to identify and eliminate wasteful steps
during manufacturing.
One bottleneck identified was a high dependency on overseas
technical support, which resulted in a higher operating cost and a
longer lead time in solving manufacturing problems.
Hence, a "made in Singapore" line was set up last year. Compared
to the other nine lines in the plant running on German technology,
it produced 15 per cent more output and was 20 per cent more
cost-effective. Although it has been running for only two months,
Mr Mark Chua, the general manager of CIBA Vision, said that it is
"a long-term intention of the organisation to try to localise
future lines".
Another bottleneck was low labour productivity, which was
tackled by sending production workers for skills training to learn
how to perform other tasks.
A third bottleneck was low machine productivity. To address
this, engineers sped up the process time at slower stations, such
as where lenses are dried.
In addition to production incentive payouts, Mr Chua also
highlighted a reward and recognition scheme, providing bonuses
based on employees' performance and contribution.
NTUC secretary-general Lim Swee Say said: "CBF is all about the
business, relative to the competition. The concept is not new, but
we came up with it to refocus our economy."
<!-- CONTENT : end --><!--end storybody--><!--end
storybox-->
http://news.omy.sg/News/Local%2BNews/Story/OMYStory201006040037-157003.html1
http://news.omy.sg/News/Local%2BNews/Story/OMYStory201006040037-157003/2.html
<!--end storybody--><!--end storybox-->
Did swee sway asked Ciba if the workers are singaporean or
foreigners??
