TRACC Global Conference, Shanghai, China - 10-12 March 2010

168 Continuous Improvement (CI) practitioners and leaders in industry joined our first ASPAC conference and shared experiences on how to fast track People Development for Continuous Improvement.

Presentations were simultaneously translated in English and Mandarin.

A few highlights:

Gary Thomas - General Manager, Manufacturing, HJ Heinz Australia
“Continuous improvement cannot succeed if it is held in the hands of the ‘few and the proud’ at each operation. Everyone must understand and own their role in our journey to world class . . . and that takes consistent, clear communication and people development."

Kwok Hoe Choy - Director of Learning & Organisational Development - CSC
"The ultimate competitive edge is your organisation's ability to learn, un-learn and re-learn faster than your competitors."

Stanislaw Wasko - Chief Operating Officer, Can Pack S.A - Europe
"In the first six months we got no return, but you have to trust the process. In the first twelve months we achieved a 200% return and 400% return in the next two years. We outperform our competitors on EBIT by 35–50% and this consistently creates an investment opportunity for us.  We have the same costs as our competitors and produce twice as much as they do on the same lines. We needed to create a stable, predictable manufacturing environment to produce consistent profits that would enable us to grow and we needed to make our people believe that our aggressive growth targets could be reached. People believe what they can touch. We got our people to believe by proving the success of a TRACC implementation on a pilot line with a 200% return in 12 months."

Fernando Teixeira - Supply Chain Director, ANZ, Kellogg's
"We now have a common language and more ‘eyes’ on eliminating waste. TRACC K-Lean is increasing packaging capacity by 4% annually and reducing downtime by 40-60%. We have full union support and our people are willing to arrive early for shift handover."