Cordoba companies that compete internationally travel long distances in pursuit of competitiveness. They even cross paths in the same classrooms in Japan, the Mecca of production processes. First it was Total Quality, today it's TPM. However, the path is full of twists and turns.
By Juan Pablo Dalmasso*
"Surprise!" the executives from Arcor and what was then Corcemar must have exclaimed when they met in the classroom a couple of years ago. While crossing paths in training courses has become common in recent years, doing so in Japan is a different story.
A second glance may dispel the confusion; the land of the rising sun is the paradigm of efficient production processes. "The Japanese invest in improving the production processes of the products we develop," has been the lament of Americans since Sony and Toyota began to lead in their respective segments.
Specifically, cement and candy makers from Cordoba were studying a new production system. "The Japanese invented several models: Just in Time, TQM, and Total Quality Control. We adopted TPM, or Total Productive Maintenance," says Raúl Perez Verzini, who began implementing the program at Corcemar and later became a consultant on the subject.
More than Total Quality
TPM originated in Nipondenso's plants in the late 1960s. But the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance systematized, registered, and disseminated it as a way of improving total quality much later.
Thus, in the 1990s, the system gained acceptance among companies, thanks to firms such as Unilever, Ford, and Kodak, who decided to implement it. Corcemar and Arcor are the Cordoba paradigms of these new techniques.
Both represent the local industrial sector's quest for productivity, at a time when capital injections are no longer sufficient to improve performance.
In this sense, the system tested by the people of Arroyito and Yocsina relies on flexible methodologies and continuous performance improvement, without the need for large investments in capital goods.
“This system highlights the value of human capital over that of machines,” says Jorge Lawson of Arcor. “Its philosophy begins in the trenches. We’re not just talking about managers, but about the importance of the entire team,” Perez Verzini emphasizes.
Production is thus based on management teams that set general policies and objectives, on the one hand, and autonomous teams with their own initiative to set their own operational objectives.
"This system is a new twist on total quality: unlike the other model, the goal is to create a plant that doesn't shut down, not even for maintenance," the consultant emphasizes.
Comings and goings
The implementation of TPM at Corblock and an experimental line at Arcor were technically successful. In Corblock's case, costs were reduced by 12% in two years, staff was reduced by 45%, salaries were increased by 50%, and the plant went from producing 40% of its capacity to nearly 60%.
Arcor doesn't provide official data because it's still in conflict with the food industry over the implementation of TPM. But even union sources indicate that on the line where the experiment was conducted, productivity increased by 30%, and the work of five workers was reduced to three.
Despite such successes, both corporations have taken a step backward. The new Juan Minetti company has not yet decided whether it will corporately adopt the system tested at Corblock. Arcor had planned to use it at all its plants worldwide but claims to have halted its progress until reaching an agreement with the union. The union, however, denounces that it has already been implemented at the Colonia Caroya plant.
According to the Japanese, the Tao (path) is an inevitable journey riddled with twists and turns. Globalized local companies need a new path beyond managerial preferences and union opposition. The alternative is to remain on the sidelines.
The Eight Commandments
TPM considers eight pillars for the optimal functioning of the industrial plant:
Safety and environment: eliminating sources of accidents and illnesses.
Maintaining Quality, the process, and each team.
Continuing education and training of all human resources.
Planned maintenance, according to a schedule.
Autonomous maintenance: Use cleaning as an inspection to find possible defects.
Initial control: used to avoid maintenance tasks.
Improvements focused on solving the problems detected.
Administrative areas: control and development of the indicators used in the plant.
* Mercado Córdoba Magazine. Issue No. 63. September 1999.
