05 September 2024
Sumitomo Electric Group Kaizen Awards
As a global organization that is focused on production technology, every day there are efforts made at Sumitomo Electric Group companies around the world to strengthen our manufacturing capabilities. Many of these activities are part of three noteworthy initiatives we call Small Group Activities, Kaizen Suggestions, and Excellent "200 Kaizen" Factories. The first initiative is composed of small groups working to resolve specific issues encountered in their workplace. The second initiative is about individual employees coming up with useful ideas to improve production work or office work in some way. The third initiative aims to create stronger factories by encouraging employees to find around 10 improvements per business day, so that their factory continually makes 200 or more improvements every month.
To celebrate these three initiatives, an awards ceremony was held at Osaka Works on July 19. Teams that worked on each of the initiatives participated in the ceremony. This included participants from our overseas companies, and the global nature of the event was a promising sign that the initiatives are spreading far and wide within the Sumitomo Electric Group.
Starting with the Small Group Activities initiative, participants from teams representing each of our business units gave a presentation about their kaizen project. The President’s Award in this category was won by the Kamine Group from the Overhead Wire Division’s Aluminum Wire Factory, representing the Environment & Energy Business Unit. The Kamine Group worked tenaciously to eliminate a specific problem that had been a longstanding issue and were successful in this task. As I listened to all the presentations, I was impressed by each team’s level of engagement in their activities. It was also obvious to me, by the unique names given to the projects, that the teams enjoyed their problem-solving.
In the Kaizen Suggestions category, the Purchasing Section of the Business Planning Department at Sumitomo (SEI) Electronic Wire, Inc., was recognized with the President’s Award. This team from our Electronics Business Unit proposed a method to reduce the number of hours it takes to process the sales figures of raw materials sold to overseas manufacturing companies. This was a proposal that involved a major review of procedures across their business unit, and it may serve as a good reference for many other of our workplaces.
In the Excellent "200 Kaizen" Factories category, the President’s Award was presented to the Thanh Liem factory of Sumi Vietnam Wiring System Co., Ltd. This is a newly-established factory in our Automotive Division. The kaizen team in Thanh Liem did a remarkable job of actively listening to the needs of the many new employees at this new location and approaching the various concerns with a fresh perspective.
All of the activities honored that day are excellent examples of closely observing issues and applying the principles of real place (genba), real thing (genbutsu), and real facts (genjitsu). Furthermore, as these types of activities not only lead to stronger factories but also support the realization of our Mid-term Management Plan 2025 and 2030 VISION, I look forward to seeing even more engagement in our companies’ kaizen initiatives in the future.
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