Craddock, former manufacturing plant general manager at Nissan SA, says that internal company initiatives are in line with the APDP’s focus on volume-driven incentives rather than those of its predecessor, the Motor Industry Development Plan (MIDP), which were geared towards exports.

“One of the objectives of the Shift_NSA programme is to increase our capability to make sure we meet the demands that will be placed on us as a result of the higher volumes expected of all motor manufacturers,” said Craddock.

This applies particularly to the plant, adds Craddock, which has its own sub-programme -Shift_Monozukuri - to encourage greater volume throughput across the various disciplines. A number of system changes are planned, allowing for more flexibility to change model mixes and more capability with respect to inventory management and awareness of stock levels to meet volume demands. “This has an inbound and outbound component,” explains Craddock, “from sourcing of parts from a variety of areas both locally and abroad, as well as distribution to dealers.” The system is expected to overcome previous challenges in guaranteeing parts availability to meet volume demand. 

Nissan SA’s internal manufacturing capability is also being addressed through focused training programmes, improved communication and entrenchment of the Gemba Kanri principle in support of standardisation. Job-specific training of plant personnel from junior to senior level is being carried out in conjunction with Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK) – NMUK – a leader and benchmark within the company. In-house training is to be complemented with site visits by management to high productive plants like Nissan’s Oppama plant in Japan to “look, see, touch, feel and sense what the possibilities are around what they can actually achieve”, says a motivated Craddock, underscoring the need for a more structured training approach.  “We want to make sure that the different levels of the organisation are equipped with the right basket of skills required to do their jobs, so we have high expectations from the programme.”

In order to meet the challenges of cost, quality and timely delivery, standardisation is being introduced across the board. This starts with something as seemingly insignificant as workwear. “It’s about teamwork, morale building and doing away with an ‘us and them’ syndrome,” stresses the driver of change. “If you want to drive standardisation it’s got to be the cornerstone of everything you do as an organisation and standardising the workwear is part of this particular initiative,” says Craddock, believing it spills over into other workplace areas.

Consistent messaging among employees is also important, emphasises Craddock.  “What we’re trying to do now is create standard forums, standard types of communication, and different mediums of communication to make sure that people constantly get the message and that they are constantly informed of how we’re achieving against those objectives.” Training courses are being targeted at agents of communication within the organisation – from managing director to team leaders – to ensure that the right information is cascaded from executive to shop floor level.  “These training coursers are empowering key communicators to relay messages consistently across the organisation.”

Craddock is confident that the above interventions support his strategy of Nissan SA becoming one of the most productive plants in the Nissan family. The company fares well against its GOM (general overseas markets) region counterparts as regards cost per unit, build quality of the cars produced, and delivery of cars into stock.

 “We’re in a good place right now and where there are any gaps, we are structurally aligned to deal with them. We’re pretty confident we’ll meet any challenges between now and the end of the year and beyond,” sums up the man charged with taking Nissan manufacturing into the future.