5 steps towards world class manufacturing

Fibercore Limited, Europe's premier speciality optical fibre manufacturer, will reinforce its market leadership when it undertakes a programme of '5S' production efficiency training October 21 - 23

Fibercore Limited, Europe's premier speciality optical fibre manufacturer, will reinforce its market leadership when it undertakes a programme of '5S' production efficiency training later this month.

Having moved into a brand new, custom designed production facility at the start of the year, the programme will use the Japanese methodology to reinforce the company's drive towards world class manufacturing processes in order to ensure maximum efficiency and sustain process excellence.

5S centres around organizing, cleaning, developing, and sustaining a productive work environment and was the idea of Hiroyuki Hirano.

The 5 key aspects of the programme, known as pillars are Seiri (Sort), Seiton (Straighten), Seiso (Sweep), Seiketsu (Standardise) and Shitsuke (Self-Discipline) and are designed to improve quality, productivity, safety and morale within a department or organisation.

The programme will take place at Fibercore Limited between October 21st - 23rd and will involve all staff.

It is designed to refine existing processes and install a shared vision amongst the workforce.

Dr Chris Emslie, Managing Director of Fibercore Limited explains, 'The opportunity to design a new facility from the ground up was a huge privilege and enabled us to create an environment which exactly suited our unique production process.

The 5S programme will help us to refine these processes and maximise the benefits that we have been able to achieve since moving to the new facility.

'The production of optical fibre is seen by some as a black art and I believe that our success is proof that to successfully manufacture fibres with the levels of quality assurance that we offer customers requires us to apply world class manufacturing principles to every step of the process.

This approach has enabled us to increase production volumes while retaining the same focus on quality.

It has also resulted in us weathering the current telecoms depression better than our competition with profitability still at more than 60% of boom levels'.

Despite the unarguable benefits the programme will deliver, it does have one downside - the production facility will close for the 3 day programme.

Chris Emslie says, 'Despite the continued down-turn in the optical fibre industry, Fibercore Limited has build and maintained a hard-core of regular volume customers and is actually shipping significantly more fibre than it did in 2001.

The strength of our order book means that this shutdown has been in the planning for months - critical stock has been built up and all deliveries will be made on time'.

'We didn't even shutdown production as we transferred operations to our new facility, and 3 days is the longest closure I ever want to have to undertake.

However, to maximise the benefit of the 5S programme will require participation by the whole team.

Our programme to deliver world-class manufacturing processes throughout the business is paramount to our continuing to meet our customers' requirements and the long term success of the business.

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