DEVELOPMENTS IN LEAN MANUFACTURING IN CHINA

By Ms. Jane Yu, Managing Consultant, Shanghai Onpress

Ms. Yu graduated from finance in Beijing; she then joined Pricewaterhouse and worked there for over 3 years.  She joined Onpress as a recruiter and consultant 3 years ago and has been promoted to her current position for over 18 months.

In the past 2 years, we’ve found that  more and more companies in the manufacturing industry have begun to pay attention to the Lean Manufacturing (LM).  What is LM?  To explain it in one sentence: it is to eliminate the waste in the whole manufacturing process, so as to lower the overall manufacturing cost and generate more profit.

This concept was firstly adopted and carried forward by the Japanese company Toyota and proved to be very successful.  The Toyota Production System, called TPS hereafter, has become a good example of LM practice.

Western companies have realized the importance LM and performed the LM practices for years.  But in China, it is still a relatively new idea and practice.  Years ago, when the foreign companies began to set up manufacturing sites in China, labor was quite cheap and it seemed to have no necessities for those labor-intensive plants to carry out LM.  Nowadays, however, things have changed a lot.  The very competitive marketing environment has made LM a trend worldwide, including in China.

So the foreign companies have begun to promote LM within their plants.  They invite consulting companies to provide LM training to their management teams and import LM experts to help them establish the LM systems.

Onpress has engaged in LM searches since 2001.  We have established a talent pool with a number of LM candidates of different levels of LM experiences.  With a partner in the US, we have conducted these searches globally, including the USA, Europe, Australia/New Zealand/Canada, Asia and China.   And we have also set up a LM expertise website at www.chinarecruiter.com to serve our candidates and clients.

In terms of future business developments, Onpress will continue to help preach the merits of LM.  Our target is to collectively raise the manufacturing standards in China.