Textile manufacturers should adopt the "lean manufacturing" method, instead of the batch method widely used here at present if their sunset industry is to be rejuvenated, and efficiency and competitiveness improved, experts said Monday.
Through lean manufacturing, they said, manufacturers could eliminate their current time-consuming batch processes and replace them with continuous processes, without having to resort to dismissals.
Factories here usually produce, assemble, package and distribute their products in batches.
Using the continuous method, all the links in the chain are processed continuously without any interruptions or breaks, unlike the situation that prevails using the batch method.
"Basically, all processes from manufacturing to product delivery to the end consumer constitute batches of work that have no added value," said Michael T. Fralix, the president of TC2, a non-profit organization offering solutions to the textile industry.
Speaking on the sidelines of a seminar sponsored by the U.S.-based Cotton Council International (CCI), Fralix said that by adopting lean manufacturing, production costs and unemployment would decline, while productivity and product quality would increase.
The managing director of the University of Indonesia's Management Institute, Budi Soetjipto, offered a rough comparison, saying that 500 workers who could make products worth Rp 100 million (US$11,000) over a certain period of time using the batch method might be able to make Rp 1 billion-worth of products during the same period of time using the lean manufacturing approach.
Achmad S. Ruky, an expert on wage bargaining, said that Indonesian workers, together with those in the Philippines, had the lowest productivity levels in Southeast Asia.
Based on 2003 figures, he said, Indonesian and Philippine workers in the manufacturing sector were able to finish their tasks in eight hours, and earned 33 U.S. cents per hour.
By comparison, Thai workers earned 92 U.S. cents per hour and could finish similar tasks in two hours and 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, in Singapore and Malaysia, workers could finish similar tasks within 11 minutes, and an hour and five minutes, respectively.
