The Automotive Industry Development Centre hosted the Kaizen Seminar and Awards, on Wednesday 14 March 2018, at Emperors Palace.
The word Kaizen is derived from Japanese, meaning “continuous improvement” and includes all initiatives that focus on process engineering and improvements. The event alternates between AIDC (EC) and AIDC (GP), and in 2017 was hosted by AIDC EC.
AIDC stakeholders and representatives of automotive companies such as JIKA SA, National Association of Automotive Component (NAACAM), Lean Institute Africa and Mercedes Benz SA to name a few, all attended the seminar.
The purpose of this seminar is to drive, embrace and enhance a culture of continuous improvement amongst automotive companies, and lead them to being competitive in the business aspect of the industry.
The two award categories namely, Shop Floor Kaizens Award and Engineer/Manager Kaizen Award were presented on the day, judged by Professor Norman Faull (Founder of Lean Institute Africa), Renai Mootilal (Executive director: NAACAM) and Marc Fienberg (Industrial Engineer) of Mercedes Benz SA.
The Shop Floor Kaizen award category description emphasised on the uniqueness and simplicity of the Kaizen idea, with a root cause analysis and applicable visual controls. On the other hand, the Engineer/Manager Kaizen award description focused more on the tools used for problem solving, relative importance to production, quality, cost, delivery and morale by the Manager/Engineer Kaizen.
The company which scored the highest of the combined scores of the judges for the day was Auto Industrial Machining, for both categories. Which saw them walk away with both awards presented on the day.
The awards were the last item on the programme for the day, and a session of networking was opened thereafter. “The ultimate goal is to grow this event so that it is recognized within the industry so that companies aspire to be part of it. It also seeks to increase the competitiveness of the industry and attract more companies, and make winning that award something to be proud of” – said Nkumbuzi Ben-Mazwi (Manager: AIDC Supply Enterprise Development Department).