July 1st, 2019, Published in Articles: EngineerIT

The first Factory of the Year (FotY) award has been presented to Eberspächer South Africa, leading manufacturer of exhaust systems. FotY performance is evaluated based on six key dimensions: customer satisfaction; quality; value creation; economics (cost management, personnel productivity, asset productivity and resource efficiency); agility; and innovation.  The jury acknowledged Eberspächer South Africa as being a highly efficient manufacturer, with a balanced score across all dimensions assessed, scoring within the top quintile of global benchmarks within the “Quality” dimension. In addition, Eberspächer South Africa’s advanced use of robotics and automation has brought about efficiency gains for the factory in recent years. In addition, four Excellence awards were given to participants which performed exceptionally well in a specific dimension of the FotY competition. Columbus Stainless was recognised for Excellence in Large Scale Production with Nyamezela Metering acknowledged for Excellence in Small Scale Production. The Excellence in Digitisation award was given to Atlantis Foundries, and Nampak (Bevcan Rosslyn) won the award for Excellence in Resource Efficiency. Factory of the Year is a global annual benchmarking competition that has been running for over 25 years and is recognised as the toughest benchmarking test for companies in the production arena. The competition has benchmarks and best practices from over 2000 factories across all industries and over 30 countries. This initiative was launched in 2018 in South Africa by AT Kearney in partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Manufacturing Circle and Manufacturing Indaba.

Igor Hulak, Partner at AT Kearney, says the current dynamics of the globalising world presents a challenge for all manufacturing operations, and specifically within the South African manufacturing environment where a strong sector has immense downstream impact. “More than ever, companies have to find the right balance in their manufacturing footprint and global value chain design. To successfully sustain and grow production, achieving and maintaining world-class excellence requires every manufacturer to relentlessly and continually pursue efficiency improvements. But nowadays, that is not enough. The 4th Industrial Revolution is not a theoretical term any longer, yet to be somehow understood. As such the local manufacturing community can no longer shy away from the pace of adoption of the 4IR technologies on shop floors, which has been dramatically increasing over the past three years. Though the South African sector in general has a relatively wide performance gap to close, we have been very pleased to see that the top awardees in this country can withstand direct comparison with world class performance and standards on the evaluated dimensions.”

He says the idea of identifying and rewarding world-class performance and providing all participants with a confidential evaluation of their competitive position free of charge is therefore more meaningful and beneficial than ever before. This is what Factory of the Year aims to do. Since its inception in 1992, hundreds of companies have participated and benefited from the independent, cross-industry feedback that comes with the benchmark. It has enabled them to analyse their strengths and weaknesses and initiate spot-on improvements which, from a local perspective, should become an enabler of greater operational excellence.

Philippa Rodseth, Executive Director of the Manufacturing Circle said she was inspired by the range and quality of submissions, and to see how applicants compete with international counterparts according to the objective benchmarking process that has been established over several years by administering the competition across various countries. “This competition is important for the manufacturing sector because it raises the profile of our industry. It is important that the broader public has a better understanding of what different manufacturing businesses entail, from the likes of a foundry dealing with molten metals, to a high-tech facility managing the interface between people and artificial intelligence in a production process.”

Contact Mark Saunders, AT Kearney, Tel 010 492-5100, mark.saunders@atkearney.com

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