Tetra Pak Honored for Manufacturing Excellence in Singapore with Top National Award
(Business News, 19 Nov 2007 )
Tetra Pak Jurong Pte Ltd has been selected as this year’s MAXA winner, with overall excellence in innovation, operations and sustainability. MAXA represents the highest level of recognition to outstanding Singapore-based operations that have achieved world-class manufacturing standards.
In addition, Kenwood Electronics Technologies Singapore was selected for the Innovation Award, while 3M Singapore Pte Ltd and Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Co. Pte Ltd (SSMC) were awarded for Operational Excellence. For successfully leveraging Singapore’s advantages to grow its operations and business locally and regionally, Beyonics International Pte Ltd was selected for the Singapore Advantage Award.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who announced the creation of a national award for manufacturing in 2005, presented the 2007 MAXA winners with the award at a ceremony held in conjunction with the opening of Global Entrepolis @ Singapore 2007.
Alberto Tureikis, South & South East Asia Supply Chain Director of Tetra Pak Jurong Pte Ltd, said: “We are greatly honoured to emerge as the overall MAXA winner amongst the top manufacturers in Singapore. This helps to raise the manufacturing standard in Singapore. We at Tetra Pak believe in manufacturing excellence. This is essentially how we conduct our business locally as well as globally. Our people are engaged and motivated to contribute actively to the achievement of both business and personal objectives.”
Tetra Pak Jurong stood out for its production system, which leverages the company’s unique approach to ensure operational improvement and downtime minimization. Being one of the biggest Tetra Pak packaging materials factories in the world, the Singapore plant also serves as a research and development (R&D) and application development centre. Tetra Pak Jurong is also a model for encouraging innovation throughout the company with it implementing hundreds of new ideas contributed by its employees each year.
Kenwood Electronics, which manufactures high value-added communication equipment here, led in product and process innovation, including collaboration with local research institutions to further boost in-house R&D capabilities. The Singapore plant leads others in the Kenwood network as a total solution provider, creating value through world-class practices.
On operational excellence, 3M Singapore was commended for its management of its supply chain and commitment to preserving the environment. This consciousness is also complemented by the company’s strong focus on employee training and effective human resource deployment in the areas of research and innovation to anticipate and meet customers’ and partners’ needs.
SSMC, which was also presented with the Operational Excellence Award, is a model wafer fab operation. The company attributed its win to its strong performance-driven culture and an outstanding manufacturing system and continuous improvement infrastructure. It also practices process innovation in rapid time-to-market reduction by simulating potential design issues before prototyping. The company is also a strong corporate citizen, striving to reduce the environmental impact of its processes while expanding its process technology portfolio and wafer engineering and manufacturing services.
Beyonics International, a home-grown contract manufacturer, has been able to make strong use of Singapore’s competitive advantages to create a reputation for delivering assurance of quality to its partners, leveraging Singapore’s intellectual property (IP) regime, its labor force and excellent infrastructure. Beyonics has tapped on its well-established position in Singapore to break successfully into the global biomedical market and is now making inroads into the automotive industry.
Ko Kheng Hwa, Managing Director, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), said: “MAXA underscores the importance of manufacturing as a key driver of Singapore’s economic growth. It also reinforces Singapore’s continuing international competitiveness in the manufacturing sector. This year’s MAXA winners once again demonstrate how the world’s leading companies leverage Singapore’s strengths to deliver world class manufacturing excellence.”
Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, Professor of Manufacturing and Director of Warwick Manufacturing Group at Warwick University, United Kingdom and Chairperson of the MAXA 2007 judging panel, commented: “The overall calibre of participants this year has improved and this has made the judging process more challenging. The finalists are all winners in their own right for they have demonstrated effectively through their presentations and our deep-dive analysis that they are of global standing with world-class manufacturing capabilities.”
Dr Yoshiyuki Kaneda, Former Executive Deputy President and Representative Director of Sony Corp. and one of the judges for MAXA 2007, noted: “Benchmarked against international standards, we exercised the most stringent assessment of the participating companies in terms of innovations, operating systems and factors for sustainability. I was very impressed with all the finalists.”
“The level of operational efficiency and technological know-how displayed by the MAXA participants was most impressive. Judging by the high standard of the participants based here, Singapore’s manufacturing industry has the potential to grow even further, particularly in the high-technology, high-value sectors, and fulfill its vision to double industry output by 2018,” said Tan Teik Seng, Former Senior Executive Managing Director at Advanced Micro Devices Singapore.
This year, previous Singapore Quality Award winners from the manufacturing sector were invited to apply for the MAXA. In addition, the MAXA partners have also included recommendations from the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) to further enhance and emphasize the importance of innovation and its management in manufacturing.
“The MAXA finalist companies all showed a strong focus on leveraging Singapore's competitive advantage. They all operate on a global scale and leverage Singapore's connectivity in doing so. Singapore's IP protection regime and network of research institutions encourage many companies to locate R&D activities here. Many operations smartly integrate Singapore production within a supply chain that links lower-cost facilities in the region. Sensitivity to environmental impact was also a theme with MAXA companies this year, demonstrating how minimizing waste in manufacturing is an important path to long term sustainability,” Chinta Bhagat, Managing Partner, Singapore, McKinsey & Company, a MAXA partner, said.
Professor Hardy Chan, Co-Director of the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA), also a MAXA partner, said: “SMA congratulates the winners for being awarded the MAXA seal of recognition. Indeed, following a stringent judging process, this rare honor is only given to those who set technology and operations benchmarks. SMA is proud to have contributed expertise to shortlist the finalists.”
All companies with manufacturing operations in Singapore are eligible to vie for MAXA through self-nomination. The companies that took part in MAXA 2007 spanned diverse manufacturing industries such as chemicals, electronics and precision engineering.
The selection process comprised three phases: 1. Companies were first assessed on innovation, manufacturing excellence and sustainability in their Singapore-based manufacturing operations via their written submissions. Short-listed companies advanced to phase two for further assessment.
2. In the second phase, assessors from McKinsey and the Singapore-MIT Alliance made a two-day visit to the manufacturing facilities of short-listed applicants and conducted interviews to validate the written submissions and to enable an extensive and deeper understanding of the company’s business and operations model. The finalists were then identified at the end of this phase.
3. In the last phase, each finalist made a presentation to and answered questions from a panel of eminent judges who then determined the winner.
The final round of judging was conducted on 9 November where the six finalists presented to and were interviewed by the judging panel chaired by Professor Lord Bhattacharyya.
MAXA is organised by EDB together with partners, McKinsey & Company and the Singapore-MIT Alliance (comprising the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University).
