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| Sunday, 16 October 2005 |
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Director on ways and means to improve productivity by Surekha Galagoda Malaysia reformed within a short period as Management reforms were under the leader of the country Prime Minister Mahatir Mohammed while they started reforms with the school system said Director National Productivity Secretariat Upali Marasinghe. He said that initially the productivity secretariat was under the Ministry of Industries but now it is under the Ministry of Labour. But my personal opinion is that it should be under the leader of the country, he said. Marasinghe was addressing a workshop on Productivity for the managerial level staff of the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd (ANCL). The National Productivity Secretariat conducts several programs at public, private, community and school level to improve productivity. He said that there are many ways to improve productivity such as increasing output keeping the input as a constant, reducing the input keeping the output as a constant, increasing input by a small amount with a large resultant increase in input and decreasing output by a large amount with a small decrease in output. He said that all should strive to improve quality, add value and promote marketing of the goods produced by a company. Marasinghe said among the misconceptions of productivity are it is a way of reducing the labour force, method to exploit labour, burden of labour and extra work, difficult working environment/tiresome job, minimises leisure time and it has rigid rules. On the contrary it helps increase national wealth, helps people get higher salaries, obtain a better standard of living and health conditions and social status by working efficiently. To improve the productivity of an organisation the work environment, instruments, methods, the work station set up, employee motivation and the quality of labour force should be developed. He said that positive thinking, implementation of 5S and workplace oriented management are necessary to improve productivity. In addition eliminating waste which occurs by over production, waiting for work and materials, transportation, unnecessary operations/processes, inventories, motions and production defects should be eliminated to improve productivity. To improve productivity we start with 5S as it is the base, can be understood by anybody and applied anywhere. The origin of 5S is from the five Japanese words Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seikitsu and Shitsuke which contributed to the rapid industrial development of Japan after World War two. Seiri refers to sorting the necessary and unnecessary things and removing the unnecessary things while Seiton is storing things necessary in order to handle things easily. Seiso is cleaning daily while Seiketsu is maintaining an environment where all the first three "S" are implemented in the same manner throughout the organisation to improve the condition. Sitsuke is sustaining the 5S system and implementing it as a habit and to train every person in the organisation to practise it. |
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