A Land of Opportunity

Melanie Veness:  PCB CEO 

The KZN Lean Congress certainly exceeded all my expectations, and to my knowledge, that of the delegates as well. I can say this with confidence, because of the incredibly positive feedback that I have received. It was a wonderful mix of presentations and practical applications and our keynote speaker, Dr. Michael Ballé, didn’t disappoint. He produced thought-provoking presentations  and offered sound and learned advice and some very challenging perspectives.

To me, his most insightful comment was that the world thinks that Africa is very “cool”. Even the US has an Afro-American president! He questioned why it is that we don’t add a touch of African “cool” to our products in order to differentiate them?

We just stood there looking at him. It is so very obvious, but it took a foreigner to make us see it clearly. He went on to say that all he sees here is opportunity. He listened to people complain about saturated markets and expensive labour, and his response was: “if you want to see saturated markets and expensive labour, come to Europe – your vision is too narrow, and you can’t see the opportunities – there is no reason why South African businesses shouldn’t be booming right now."

He also spoke about the need for quality goods in the market place – great quality at a reasonable price. Dr. Ballé is a “sensei” who usually works exclusively with company CEOs. His job is to take the chief executive to the “gemba” or “real place”, to the place where value is created and where value-creating work is done.

What stood out most out for me regarding the “gembas” is the focus we should be placing on quality at the coal face. Lean philosophy involves empowering people to manage process, and what we do very effectively is to train them to manage flow without sufficient emphasis on managing quality as part of the process.

We are inclined to manage quality independently, using quality examiners, as opposed to inculcating quality management into our workforce. In traditional quality management, the people tend to try and push production through and generally fear reprisal from quality managers, but in lean quality management, people are encouraged to “red bin” questionable quality.  According to Dr. Ballé, if you halve your inventory and manage your quality effectively, you are almost guaranteed to improve turnover by at least 40%.

If KwaZulu-Natal became known as an area that produced goods of exceptional quality, through dedicated people empowerment, we would achieve exponential growth. This made me wonder if our next congress should be about instilling a mindset of quality management in our people, of building foundational structures for sharing a broader and deeper form of thinking that produces an organizational learning that is deeply rooted in the work itself.

The congress should also look closely at the concept of “African chic”. We won’t be “cool” forever or even for that long, and the opportunity is now, and we need to seize it.

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