China Factory Visit – Buyer Diary #28 Increasing Productivity

We asked one of our clients to give us their impressions at a China factory visit during procurement recently. Read below to get an idea of how they felt during this trip, regarding the different ways to help increase productivity of workers. This is one of a series of blogs that we will title: Buyer Diary.

Ever wondered what should be done in order to increase the productivity of your workers? This is one question that every factory would have to solve in order to ensure that their human resources are well maximized. The key in solving this problem is not overloading a worker with hopes of trying to increase productivity as this might backfire instead. Today, we will be discussing about the different ways and methods to be implemented in order to increase productivity of workers.

There are many different ways that can be adopted in order to help increase the productivity of your workers. We will be focusing on 3 different ways today and evaluate them as follows:

• Implementing a reward system
• Communication and teamwork among workers
• Categorizing your workers according to their capabilities

Implementing a reward system

Implementing a reward system is optional and it varies from factory to factory. However, this is definitely one of the top choices that most factories and organisations would choose to use in order to motivate their workers. By implementing a reward system, workers would put in their best effort to finish the goods faster as this would mean a higher chance of them receiving a bonus. This would help to increase the productivity level of workers as they will work harder than before, in anticipation that the company would recognize and reward them for their hard work.

Some advantages of this reward system are as follows:

1. It serves as an encouragement for the workers and gives them something to look forward to at the end of a long day at work. This will spur them on instead of relaxing when they feel tired during working hours, thus increasing productivity overall.
2. It makes the workers feel appreciated and recognized in the factory. As factories usually have many different workers, some of them may be feel neglected and this would cause them to be less efficient at work as they see no need in putting in effort when the factory does not even care.
3. It leaves a good impression on the factory. Organisations would look forward to working with factories that treat their workers like family workers. If the factories do not treat their workers the right way, not many businesses would want to work with them as this shows that the factory is only focused on making profits.

Some disadvantages of this reward system are as follows:

1. When the workers concentrate on producing more, they might compromise the quality of the goods and this would lead to lower quality goods which are not desirable.
2. Internal strife may occur when workers try to outdo each other in order to get the bonus.
3. Those that work hard but do not get rewarded will lose motivation to work harder the next time round.

Communication and teamwork among workers

Communication and teamwork among workers is vital to ensure that projects are running smoothly. Not many companies focus on this aspect and many actually tend to neglect this, thus leading to many problems later on. When factory workers work together as a whole, it actually increases productivity as the output of a combined effort is always more than that of an individual effort. Teamwork cannot work without the presence of communication. When workers communicate with one another, it actually helps to shorten the production period as questions can be clarified if any of the workers have any doubts on hand.

Some advantages of having good communication skills and teamwork among workers are:

1. If workers have any queries or areas that they do not understand, they can help each other out instead of trying to figure it out by oneself and risk having misunderstandings. As they converse and work with one another, they would have a better understanding of the project which would in turn help to increase productivity of the whole project.
2. When the workers work together as a team, they know what is going on as a whole. This ensures that if there are any problems in the production process, everyone would know about it and solve it together. This would in turn prevent any delays in the project.
3. With good communication skills, workers would be able to pin point the product that the client wants accurately and prevent any hiccups along the way. With more accurate information, there will be less hitches and the production process would shorten as well.

By having good communication skills as well as teamwork, your factory will only stand to gain so ensure that your workers are well co-ordinated today!

Categorizing your workers according to their capabilities

Every worker has his own strengths and weaknesses. By categorizing your workers according to their capabilities, they get to do what they do best. Through this, they will face less challenges and the production process would be able to proceed smoothly. If you were to leave a worker with a job scope where he knows nothing about, chances are that he will have difficulties trying to understand what he is supposed to do in the first place.

Some advantages of categorizing your workers according to their capabilities are as follows:

1. They are familiar with their job scope and this prevents them from stumbling around, thus ensuring that production is able to run smoothly.
2. Usually, workers who are good in one area would have more interest in that area as compared to others. When they are doing what they like, they will not feel as tired or complain as much as they would if they were to do something that they do not have interest in. This ensures that they will be more productive in their work.
3. When workers focus on what they are good at, they will only get better at it over time thus increasing productivity in the long run.

Some disadvantages of categorizing your workers according to their capabilities are:

1. If there is one area of the job scope where many of the workers are good in, there will be an over-concentration of workers in that area and a shortage of workers in the other areas.
2. It would be difficult to find an expert who is good in a certain category of work where many are not familiar with.
3. For general workers, it would be slightly harder to classify them according to their abilities as they are usually the ones who have a general knowledge of every job scope but not specialized in any field of work.

Conclusion

There are many other ways to increase the productivity of your workers apart from those mentioned above. It is your choice to choose the most suitable method that you think would be effective on your factory workers. Different factories operate differently, thus you should think twice before deciding which is the best scheme to implement in order to maximize your human resources.

Read more on our previous buyer diaries:

• Procurement in China – Buyer Diary #24 Quality Control Service
• Procurement in China – Buyer Diary #25 Non Woven Bag Manufacturing Process
• China Factory Visit – Buyer Diary #26 Workers Payment Scheme