By Fawwaz Baktee
Companies are moving with the times by redesigning jobs and using technology to improve productivity at the workplace, especially in the face of a tight labour market.
Infineon Technologies Asia Pacific is one such company. It specialises in the production of semiconductors and systems for automotive and industrial use as well as chip card and security products.
For its efforts to improve productivity and the lives of its employees, the company was awarded the May Day Model Partnership award by the Labour Movement earlier this year.
Transforming Jobs
Previously, Infineon’s workers faced challenges in transporting wafer boxes from one station to another. The workers had to manually load wafer boxes onto trolleys and push them to designated locations.
“We had to manually transport the boxes in bulk. Not only was lot traceability low, the labour intensive process was also challenging for our mature workers,” said the company.
Addressing the challenge, the company tapped on the Inclusive Growth Programme (IGP) in 2014 to install a whirring conveyor belt that eliminated the need for trolleys and resulted in the reduction of low-value duties. Employees relieved of the manual work were trained and subsequently reassigned to perform more value-added tasks and operate more equipment.
“Some of them were trained to perform simple machine troubleshooting tasks and operate with a higher machine-to-man ratio while team leaders can now spend more time leading and planning day-to-day operations. Their job scopes now focus on value-added and more meaningful tasks,” said the company.
Creation of the Superteams
To achieve greater effectiveness and better performance, Infineon also formed the Superteams that comprise eight to 10 employees, with operators, technicians and team leaders working as a cohesive unit.
The close interaction between operators, technicians and team leaders helps to improve communication and teamwork.
Compared to previously where employees were grouped according to their specific job functions, the Superteams concept expands the job scope and deepens the skills of each employee.
Through job redesign and training, operators in each team are able to identify machine abnormalities and conduct simple machine repair instead of relying on technicians. In turn, the technicians are able to support operations more actively and take on engineer-level tasks.
A Win-Win Outcome
The improvement in productivity saw 36 employees receiving an average salary adjustment of 7.51 per cent while 41 employees were promoted and received an average salary adjustment of 9.63 per cent.
“Productivity improvement is a journey where we seek to replace low value-added tasks with high value-added ones by giving our employees the opportunity to participate, learn and progress their careers through competencies and skills development. In return, we see improved productivity, a motivated workforce with relevant skills set and a more sustainable business,” said Infineon.
Source: NTUC This Week
