When you’re pitching for large contracts, it’s important to demonstrate the resilience and sustainability of your business. The Australian Cable Initiative (ACI) shares how sustainability can be built-in to the day-to-day.

The Australian cable industry is without a doubt a stand-out manufacturing success. The high-quality manufacturing facilities right here in Australia supply 50% of all cables used in the country.

With the propensity to import manufactured goods from overseas into Australia, the Australian cable industry is bucking this trend and all without any specific government support. You may well be wondering how the cable industry has been able to achieve this high level of success?

In short, cable manufacturers have had to become very good at managing their businesses and, in particular, controlling costs and business processes to make their businesses sustainable.

They have been able to consistently deliver high quality, compliant cables, building trust in their supply and gaining a strong international reputation.

Key business functions like regulatory compliance, financial management, risk management, technology integration and customer relations, while often seen as mere ‘housekeeping,’ are essential.

But the ACI members exceed these basics by implementing advanced programs in their manufacturing divisions to enhance sustainability and cost-effectiveness – for example, the Lean Six Sigma program. 

What is Lean Six Sigma?

Lean Six Sigma promotes continuous improvement by minimising process variation, which reduces waste and costs. It provides a structured framework to control and improve processes using various tools and techniques. Practitioners receive comprehensive training, progressing from White Belt to Master Black Belt, who can train others. Lean Six Sigma projects frequently yield impressive results.

OHSE programs

Workplace Health and Safety is crucial for sustainable businesses. Successful companies engage all employees in identifying and eliminating hazards, capturing ‘near misses’ to gather data and improve processes, thereby reducing risks. This approach involves multiple levels, detailed below:

Elimination

Completely remove the hazard from the workplace which is the most effective way to protect workers.

Substitution

Replace the hazard with a less dangerous alternative. For example, using less toxic chemicals.

Engineering controls

Isolate people from the hazard through physical means. Examples include guards, ventilation systems and machine enclosures.

Administrative controls

Change work policies or procedures to reduce risk. Includes training, shift rotations, warning signs, and work schedules.

Personal protective equipment (PPE)

Equip workers with protective gear such as gloves, masks, helmets, and eye protection. Considered the last line of defence and least effective when used alone.

Any accidents that do occur, be it either Medically Treated Injury (MTI) or at worst, a Lost Time Injury (LTI) have to be fully and thoroughly investigated to implement one of the strategies listed above. Companies are usually required to track and report on their MTI and LTI performance to demonstrate that there are genuine improvements underway.

Staff wellbeing programs

Companies recognise that retaining staff requires more than just a job; the work environment and nature of the tasks matter. Workplaces must be safe and should not lead to physical strain. One ACI member has partnered with a university to monitor employees with movement sensors to detect any excessive stresses from their movements. Additionally, employee wellbeing programs, like the RUOK campaign, are increasingly common in work settings.

Probity management

Regulatory compliance is essential for ACI members, who are highly aware of this obligation. They hold periodic meetings, either in-person or via remote conferencing. All meetings are attended by a Probity Officer, typically a lawyer, to prevent accidental breaches of ACCC competition and consumer laws. At each meeting’s start, the Probity Officer reads a compliance statement reminding participants of their anti-competitive obligations, establishing a gold standard for ethical and lawful meetings.

In this article we have tried to give a flavour of what is possible, in a business environment, to ensure businesses in Australia are sustainable now and into the future.

How Lean Six Sigma helps to reduce costs

Through the application of Lean Six Sigma techniques, costs can be significantly reduced as demonstrated in the following fictitious example:

The amount a process varies is usually quantified, statistically, by its Standard Deviation. As an example, suppose a process must make some plastic that has a minimum thickness of 2mm. You get paid only to make it 2mm thick, and it must not go below 2mm. The graph opposite shows the output from a process with a standard deviation of 0.6 (blue line). You would need to make the plastic 3mm thick on average (orange line) to ensure, with a Standard Deviation of 0.6, it never goes below 2mm (green line). The additional cost between the 2mm thickness you get paid for and the 3mm thickness you have to make because of the large process variation, comes out of your profits.

A Six Sigma team is set to work to look at the process and reduce its variation. They have some good success, and they manage to halve the Standard Deviation to 0.3 as shown in the second graph. Because the variation is significantly reduced, the average thickness can be reduced by about 17% to 2.5mm and the process output still does not go below the 2mm minimum.

Just imagine what a 17% reduction in material cost could do to your bottom line! It also results in a far more consistent product for the company’s customers. 

This is a very simple example of the power of the Lean Six Sigma approach to process improvement. The example is a manufacturing process, but the approach can equally be applied to any process, even an office process.