Raymond (the Plakkies team) in Durban, 8th of october 2009
October 12 2009
Lisa, Paul and I Visited the Ubuntu Company for the second time.
After the process description of the day before, it was time for a more detailed study of the strap manufacturing line. It is already clear that the strap manufacturing line is limiting the system productivity. The question is now: what subprocesses need to be improved to increase the system productivity? I have been making some countings for it and saw that there are 2, 3 subprocesses that need extra labour force.
The production manager Nelson Phillay asked me why I wasn’t wearing the Plakkies. My answer was that I didn’t like thorns between his toes. Nelson had a quick reply: ‘I will solve that for you’ and he left me for a while. Later I saw him standing in the factory giving instructions to the people on what they should do.
Meanwhile Lisa was having a rough time with the tyres; she was trying to cut and rip the thread of the tyres in all ways, all on her own. She had many glancing eyes from the Ubuntu people: what the heck is she doing?
At 11:30 Paul came to us, inviting us for a moment of reflection, outside in the sun. During this session we had a learning on our strengths and traps in which we can fall in.
We talked about what you can do in order to avoid the traps. (Thanks Paul for joining us and the advices he gave.) After the session we said goodbye to Paul who was going back to the Nova Team in Pretoria and continued our work.
Lisa was spending hours with the tyres. Suddenly she came to me, asking me to take some pictures. Something had happened. And there they were standing: Arafath the general manager, Nelson the production manager and also the floor manager and quality manager. They were all pulling on the thread that was already loose at the cut that was made by Lisa. Everyone realized that once you have some part of the thread loose, you can pull the thread relatively easily from the steel belt. Question is: how can you easily accomplish the first loosening?
After the success of Lisa, I went back to my process scan. After several hours Nelson came to me. He was holding two brand new Plakkies in his hand - not those I expected. They were quite different. He had designed new Plakkies with broad leather straps that were crossing eachother diagonally. I found them fantastic! No thorns, so that you have free toes. The newly designed Plakkies were shown to Arafath and we all realized that there is a big chance for extending the product range of the Plakkies. Arafath will discuss this with Robert Baruch who will visit him next Monday.
The evening Lisa and I had dinner with Arafath. We were talking about cultures, religions, guns, and the future of South Africa. It I always very interesting to talk with Arafath, who is a muslim.
Raymond
Lisa, Paul and I Visited the Ubuntu Company for the second time.
After the process description of the day before, it was time for a more detailed study of the strap manufacturing line. It is already clear that the strap manufacturing line is limiting the system productivity. The question is now: what subprocesses need to be improved to increase the system productivity? I have been making some countings for it and saw that there are 2, 3 subprocesses that need extra labour force.
The production manager Nelson Phillay asked me why I wasn’t wearing the Plakkies. My answer was that I didn’t like thorns between his toes. Nelson had a quick reply: ‘I will solve that for you’ and he left me for a while. Later I saw him standing in the factory giving instructions to the people on what they should do.
Meanwhile Lisa was having a rough time with the tyres; she was trying to cut and rip the thread of the tyres in all ways, all on her own. She had many glancing eyes from the Ubuntu people: what the heck is she doing?
At 11:30 Paul came to us, inviting us for a moment of reflection, outside in the sun. During this session we had a learning on our strengths and traps in which we can fall in.
We talked about what you can do in order to avoid the traps. (Thanks Paul for joining us and the advices he gave.) After the session we said goodbye to Paul who was going back to the Nova Team in Pretoria and continued our work.
Lisa was spending hours with the tyres. Suddenly she came to me, asking me to take some pictures. Something had happened. And there they were standing: Arafath the general manager, Nelson the production manager and also the floor manager and quality manager. They were all pulling on the thread that was already loose at the cut that was made by Lisa. Everyone realized that once you have some part of the thread loose, you can pull the thread relatively easily from the steel belt. Question is: how can you easily accomplish the first loosening?
After the success of Lisa, I went back to my process scan. After several hours Nelson came to me. He was holding two brand new Plakkies in his hand - not those I expected. They were quite different. He had designed new Plakkies with broad leather straps that were crossing eachother diagonally. I found them fantastic! No thorns, so that you have free toes. The newly designed Plakkies were shown to Arafath and we all realized that there is a big chance for extending the product range of the Plakkies. Arafath will discuss this with Robert Baruch who will visit him next Monday.
The evening Lisa and I had dinner with Arafath. We were talking about cultures, religions, guns, and the future of South Africa. It I always very interesting to talk with Arafath, who is a muslim.
Raymond