Beekman Super Canopies – the leading fibreglass bakkie canopy manufacturer in Africa – approached Productivity SA regarding our Workplace Challenge Programme with the goal of enhancing the company’s internal communication processes within the different levels of the organization, to engage with employees throughout the company’s management functions and finally to streamline the general business itself.
With our help, Beekman Super Canopies gradually implemented all the of the WPC Toolkits and achieved remarkable results in both the Stikland and Wadeville factories. After the introductory best operating practice workshop and management system toolkit, they proceeded to implement the goal alignment toolkit where they established mini-business units (MBUs) for every component of the factories’ functions. This was followed by placing special focus on increasing overall teamwork and finally cleaning and organising of the businesses’ processes.
Ewald Rossouw of the “Top Hats” MBU (Plug Manufacturing) spoke for the team when he acknowledged that the MBU members all learned a lot from the practice of formulating suitable performance measures for their MBU. They discovered that quality, cost, delivery and morale measurement also apply to their kind of work!
The results:
• Improvement in presentation and leadership skills shown by employees during meetings, resulting in the contribution of innovative ideas to operations.
• The practice of circulating responsibilities (SBUs) have increased overall employee involvement.
• Overall increase in quality and delivery performance shown throughout the participating factories.
• More factual decisions taken by managers resulting in better manager–staff relations.
• Many of the MBUs’ Standard Operating Procedures have been streamlined, contributing to a general improvement in operational efficiency of the company.
• A stronger focus on achieving key performance goals throughout the company has led to healthy competition among employees, leading to higher overall productivity levels.