Manufacturing Improvements in China: 7 Misconceptions

Over the years we have met countless factory owners and middle managers who told us that our approach to manufacturing improvements wouldn't work in China. And yet, we have quite a few success stories under our belt (a few of which are narrated in case studies such as this one).

There are several reasons behind a factory manager's reluctance to hire a consultancy to improve his organization:

• Many Chinese consultants act as teachers. They come, they preach, they leave, and nothing has changed.
• There is always resistance to change within any company. It can be deadly if it comes from the owner's family members. Or it can be dealt with, but a few "bodies" are often left behind because certain managers just won't open their mind and will keep resisting any type of change.
• The person currently in power has a strong vested interest in keeping the operations suboptimal. For example, the general manager is getting plenty of kickbacks from suppliers -- how to expect her to accept an ERP that will make her misconduct easy to detect?
• "Is there really a better way, when all competitors seem to be doing the same thing?" This is a valid point but it is easy to counter with some international ratios (e.g. the proportion of indirect vs. direct staff).
• The owner and his top managers have a few misconceptions in mind (see below). These can be hard to dislodge.

We have compiled the most common misconceptions about improvements in the Chinese manufacturing sector:

We explained our views in the attached e-book:

Download the e-book now (no registration required)

In an age of ever-increasing costs, improvements in the way manufacturing operations are run are a must. The factories that understand it and put it into practice will be tomorrow's survivors. We wish good luck to the others.