On Monday, 3rd of June 2024, the Automotive Industry Development Centre Eastern Cape awarded certificates of completion to 3 outstanding companies situated in this province that participated in the Quality and Productivity Improvement Network Project also known as QPI(Kaizen), a partnership between the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition at the Garden Court in Gqeberha.
This was the second Kaizen basic training where consultants successfully completed the training. The core value of Kaizen centres around the adoption of an attitude to pursue advanced levels of productivity by all members of an organisation, and not just the application of its management method in isolation.
Seeing as Eastern Cape has potential to be a major player in the future global automotive industry, this project catapulted by the AIDC-EC exists to improve the quality and productivity of small and mid-sized enterprises to strengthen their competitiveness and does this by carrying out activities to promote and spread Kaizen ethos.
One of the awardees of these certificates, Pieter Tinderholm who is a Commercial Director at Algoa Component Manufacturing (ACM) said, they have been able to identify an area within their organisation that challenged them and was set up just after Covid-19 in 2020. Tinderholm alluded that the specific line they had prior was not able to meet customer demand and after implementing the Kaizen training, the line was now able to produce the volumes needed to reach the required targets on all their products.
Another awardee Gerhard Swart, the Project Engineer at Acoustex, an automotive company that supplies most Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in South Africa, some of their work includes but not limited to trimming parts for Isuzu and Volkswagen (VW) locally.
“There were waste processes that we could not eliminate initially due to huge capital investment they required but after the training with Kaizen we saw opportunities for improvement in the reduction of those waste processes not requiring capital investment.
The process has allowed our staff to produce innovative ideas, and now some of those ideas are being implemented. If there are companies that are considering Kaizen training, they must embrace it because it speaks to a mindset change of being driven towards implementing continuous improvement,” said Swart.
The QPI/Kaizen project is aimed at fostering a competitive and resilient automotive ecosystem in the Eastern Cape and plans to continue with the QPI(Kaizen) Project beyond 2027.
"There are upcoming African Kaizen Awards which means companies that took part in the Kaizen training in 2023 have an opportunity this year to take part in those awards. Whilst those that took part in this training in 2024 will have an opportunity to take part in the award next year. This is an opportunity to benchmark and see what other companies and industries are doing on the African continent, further driving growth and excellence in the industry”, said Project Manager Ewald Meier.
The Africa Kaizen Awards (AKA) recognize organizations that excel in implementing Kaizen principles and practices. The awards are jointly implemented by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) and JICA.
It is through these initiatives that the AIDC-EC remains steadfast and driven to function as a catalyst for a transformed, growing, and sustainable automotive sector in the Eastern Cape.
The relationships built through the African Kaizen initiatives will open doors for the EC automotive industry to collaborate on mutually beneficial projects on the African continent.
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