First Company in Thailand to Receive 5S Best in Class Certificate

Orig­i­nat­ing in Japan, the Kaizen phi­los­o­phy of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment in a busi­ness con­text is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant in the auto­mo­bile indus­try. One dri­ving force in this con­text is the tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Con­ti­nen­tal. At the end of 2014, the Con­ti­nen­tal site in Rod­ing, Ger­many, became the first plant in the world in the auto­mo­tive sec­tor to receive a Kaizen “5S Best in Class” cer­tifi­cate for all of its depart­ments. Then, ear­ly in 2017, Continental’s 28 Cen­tral Elec­tron­ic Plants became the first world­wide fac­to­ry net­work to gain 5S cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. Now the auto­mo­tive sup­pli­er has again under­lined its role as a Kaizen pio­neer, with Continental’s Ama­ta City plant recent­ly becom­ing the first com­pa­ny in Thai­land to be pre­sent­ed with the “5S Best in Class” cer­tifi­cate by the Kaizen Insti­tute. At this plant with about 500 employ­ees, the Con­ti­nen­tal Pow­er­train division’s Engine Sys­tems busi­ness unit man­u­fac­tures injec­tor sys­tems and high-pres­sure injec­tion pumps for the Asian and Euro­pean markets.
Based on the Kaizen approach, the 5S method tar­gets the stan­dard­iza­tion and sys­tem­at­ic improve­ment of work­place orga­ni­za­tion. With the involve­ment of the entire work­force, the aim is to cre­ate a work­ing envi­ron­ment that ensures opti­mal qual­i­ty and effi­cien­cy. “An uncom­pro­mis­ing focus on qual­i­ty, effi­cient, trans­par­ent process­es and a high lev­el of employ­ee respon­si­bil­i­ty also form cen­tral pil­lars of the Con­ti­nen­tal Busi­ness Sys­tem (CBS), the busi­ness phi­los­o­phy of our com­pa­ny. So the 5S method­ol­o­gy makes a per­fect match for our aspi­ra­tions in terms of qual­i­ty and effi­cien­cy,” says the head of the Engine Sys­tems busi­ness unit, Wolf­gang Breuer. “Ama­ta City is an impor­tant site for us, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the ASEAN region ranks among the auto­mo­bile mar­kets with the high­est pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty and shows great poten­tial for growth. Our employ­ees in Ama­ta City can be proud of the fact that their fac­to­ry is the first com­pa­ny in Thai­land to be award­ed a 5S certificate.”

Rapid learning, better quality control, optimized use of space

To send out a clear sig­nal that the engage­ment of the entire work­force is essen­tial to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process, Ama­ta City kicked off the imple­men­ta­tion of 5S by orga­niz­ing a “Big Plant Clean­ing Day”. Every­one spent half a day tidy­ing up and clear­ing out every work area at the plant – from the Plant Manager’s office to the remotest cor­ner of the ware­house. Then, ear­ly in May, the Kaizen Insti­tute held an ini­tial audit in line with the 5S cri­te­ria – and the plant emerged with 28 per­cent of the max­i­mum score. For cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to take place, the min­i­mum com­pli­ance lev­el is 95 per­cent. What fol­lowed were train­ings for every employ­ee from man­ag­er to machine oper­a­tor, as well as reg­u­lar inter­nal audits. The out­come was that, when the sec­ond audit by the Kaizen Insti­tute took place a good three months lat­er, the plant scored 90 per­cent. Just recent­ly, Ama­ta City com­plet­ed its third audit with a score of 98 per­cent – an out­stand­ing per­for­mance for first-time certification.
“Our plant’s mot­to is ‘Improve­ment nev­er stops’. Through their impres­sive per­for­mance in achiev­ing such an excel­lent result in such a short time, our employ­ees have proven that this mot­to is tru­ly lived at our plant. Because the fact is that the 5S method can only be applied suc­cess­ful­ly if the entire work­force is con­vinced it’s the right thing to do and active­ly dri­ves it for­ward,” says Dr. Patrick Schmitt, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Continental’s Ama­ta City plant. He goes on to pro­vide exam­ples of the progress that can be made through 5S. For exam­ple, the method can also be used to pro­vide a clear overview of the qual­i­ty indi­ca­tors of each unit. This way, devi­a­tions from tar­get val­ues are imme­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble and the team in ques­tion can respond in a fast and tar­get­ed way. Anoth­er impor­tant aspect, accord­ing to Schmitt, is the elim­i­na­tion of unnec­es­sary costs, for exam­ple by mak­ing more eco­nom­i­cal use of space. “In many areas we can reduce our space require­ments con­sid­er­ably because work­place stan­dard­iza­tion in line with 5S means some things are no longer required.”

Certificate presented by “Mr. Kaizen” in person

“Attain­ing such an out­stand­ing result in such a short time is a huge achieve­ment for a plant of this size,” says Masaa­ki Imai in praise of the Con­ti­nen­tal plant. Imai, also known as “Mr. Kaizen” found­ed the Kaizen Insti­tute back in 1985. Today the orga­ni­za­tion sup­ports var­i­ous branch­es of indus­try in more than 50 coun­tries. At the 2018 KAIZEN™ Con­fer­ence in Kuala Lumpur, Imai him­self per­son­al­ly pre­sent­ed the 5S cer­tifi­cate to Ama­ta City Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Patrick Schmitt who had also been invit­ed to address the KAIZEN™ Con­fer­ence. “The chal­lenge now,” says Imai, “is to con­tin­ue to apply the 5S process sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and there­by assure con­tin­u­ous improve­ments going for­ward.” To demon­strate this sys­tem­at­ic appli­ca­tion, each com­pa­ny cer­ti­fied to 5S must “defend” its cer­tifi­cate once a year in the course of an audit and attain a com­pli­ance lev­el of at least 95 percent.
The term “kaizen” is made up of the two Japan­ese words kai (change) and zen (for the bet­ter). The abbre­vi­a­tion 5S stands for the five steps called Seiri (Sort), Seiton (Straight­en), Seiso (Shine), Seiket­su (Stan­dard­ize) and Shit­suke (Sus­tain).
In the pic­ture: Pre­sen­ta­tion of the 5S cer­tifi­cate at the Kaizen Con­fer­ence 2018 in Kuala Lumpur Left to right: Shar­il Goh Fad­hil (CEO of the Kaizen Insti­tute Malaysia), Masaa­ki Imai (Founder of the Kaizen Insti­tute), Dr. Patrick Schmitt (Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Continental’s Ama­ta City plant) (Source: Continental)