The productivity message is about to reach a bigger segment of the public in 2012. The National Productivity and Continuing Education Council (NPCEC) has rolled out a national productivity public outreach effort, ‘Way to Go, Singapore!’ which helps to facilitate the country’s push for higher productivity.
The campaign seeks to encourage innovation and resourcefulness, and highlights companies that have found a way to improve productivity by being able to Initiate, Innovate and Impact. To help companies and individuals embark on their productivity journeys, the ‘Way to Go, Singapore!’ portal (www.waytogo.sg) serves as a one-stop productivity resource point where information on assistance schemes, funding and training options along with real case studies are available.
Through the portal, businesses can also request for the Productivity Booster Kit to help kickstart their productivity improvement journey. The public can also look out for advertisements which highlight productivity efforts by workers and employers.
Printing Productively
One of the companies featured in the advertisements is Asiawide Print Holdings Private Limited, a Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) with 40 workers which provides professional printing services. Asiawide Print has worked on building up its productivity scheme over the last four years with help from various funding options, including the Inclusive Growth Programme (IGP). The company invested in automation to improve its productivity by purchasing a high speed folding machine which is able to fold 45,000 brochures per hour.
Previously, the brochures were folded by hand and it only produced 1,800 brochures per hour.
Asiawide Print also upgraded the Computer to Plate (CTP) system to make it fully automated. Previously, the operator had to go through four steps which took 30 minutes to complete. With the automation, it takes three minutes for the image to be transferred with a simple touch button from the server.
Habibah Darkon, 48, Senior Graphics Designer, said: “Previously, we have to check the accuracy because the alignment might not
be correct and the printing may have problems. But now with the CTP machine, the accuracy in the alignment is definitely 100 per cent because we don’t have to do it manually.”
More importantly, Asiawide Print has gain sharing schemes in place where workers can look forward to an increase in their wages by five to 15 per cent as well as performance bonuses. Printing Operator Tan Juay Meng, 52, shared that his salary has gone up by ten per cent in the last two years. By being able to operate a new printing machine, his skills have increased which translated to an increase in his salary as well.
Funding Success
Asiawide Print’s success in its productivity effort dispels the myth that funding is hard to obtain and maintain for SMEs. Asiawide Print Chief Business Officer Terrence Hong said: “Being a small company, we usually have some cashflow issues when it comes to upgrading our productivity. So we are lucky to have the funding and support and also assistance, especially from NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute). Because of their advice, we took the lead to try it out.”
NTUC's e2i Chief Executive Officer Ang Hin Kee encouraged more SMEs to go on the productivity journey as it will help them address some of their operating challenges. It will also impact a larger number of workers in the workforce. He said: “More workers are employed in SMEs than are employed in MNCs. So by working with SMEs, we reach our objective of better jobs for all through a very major employer group within the SMEs, in line with our LM2015 goal.”
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"The marketing campaign will first spread awareness. But secondly, show that things can be done. In different sectors, industries and companies, they have found ways to upgrade their workers and the quality of their job and improve the prospects for the company.
There’s really no better lesson than the lesson that comes from the experience of the companies that have done it.”
NPCEC Chairman and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam
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Four new sectors identified for productivity drive |
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Four sectors with the potential to boost the national productivity drive have been identified by the National Productivity and Continuing Education Council (NPCEC). Announced by NPCEC Chairman and Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam on 3 January 2012 at the official launch of ‘Way to Go, Singapore’, a national productivity public outreach effort, NPCEC will study the financial services, accountancy, social services and process construction & maintenance (PCM) sectors to identify areas where productivity could be improved. The four sectors collectively employed about 220,000 workers over the past five years. Productivity improvements in the financial services, accountancy and PCM sectors will have potential spillover effects on the rest of the economy. To effectively meet Singapore’s social needs in the future, productivity in the social services sector will be increasingly important. DPM Tharman said: “At the end of the day, what the productivity movement is about is quality. It’s about better products, better quality jobs, better quality wages. It’s really upgrading the quality of the entire economy so that we reach a level that is able to justify higher wages, with companies continuing to survive and staying competitive internationally. And productivity is the only way you can do that.” |
