Corporate Business

Annual Report 2003 - 2004

Corporate Business Development (CBD)

In its effort to bring changes at the level of both private and public sector organisations, the NPCC has been intensifying the Muda-Free Mauritius campaign. To enhance the productivity of private firms, industry and the public service, the CBD aims to implement the following agenda items:

• Improvement of Business Environment

• Corporate Productivity Improvement

• Promotion of Innovation

 

Improvement of Business Environment

The Muda–free Mauritius campaign has given rise to several projects and targeted interventions.

Muda-Free Public Service

Under this programme, in-plant interventions in public sector organisations were initiated in December 2002. In financial year 2003-2004, 13 Gemba kaizen workshops were conducted in other government departments and ministries.

The physical workplace environment of the staff of the municipality of Port-Louis was significantly improved through the application of the SS/good housekeeping principles

Port Louis – A Muda-Free City

In February 2004, the municipality of Port Louis and the NPCC developed a programme for making “Port Louis – A Muda-Free City.” The broad objective of the programme is to make the City of Port Louis a place where citizens are happy to live in and work. Improvements targeted three different levels, namely:

• the physical workplace environment of the staff of the Council, i.e. how to improve the environment of those providing the services

• the processes which involve interactions between the staff and the citizens, i.e. how to improve the delivery of services by the Council to the citizens.

• the empowerment of citizens by enhancing civic responsibility.

The programme started with a series of sensitisation sessions for the staff of the municipality on productivity concepts. The latter was followed by two Gemba Kaizen workshops in April and June.

Empowerment of enterprises through clustering

In order to enhance collaboration between enterprises, NPCC has been providing assistance to existing clusters in the textile and in the footwear sectors. This included a strategic planning exercise for the textile cluster. Meetings of the Productivity Implementation Committee on Clustering have been held to address policy level issues. A platform (NPCC discussion forum) has also been developed to facilitate exchange of information between enterprises. A pilot project for clustering in the agribusiness sector has also been initiated.

 

Corporate Productivity Improvement

Productivity improvement in firms (on demand)

Six Gemba Kaizen interventions have been conducted in four organisations in the following sectors: garment making, television assembly and chemicals production.

Strategic visioning for individual organisations

Assistance was provided to three organisations to help them develop their strategies and action plans. The length of the interventions varied from half to one day.

Productivity assessment and improvement for the textile and garment industry

Since July 2003, the NPCC has been involved in the national effort to restructure the textile and garment industry through the Textile Emergency Support Team (TEST).

The Level 1 Enterprise Assessment was entrusted by TEST to the NPCC. The NPCC has been responsible for the collection, compilation, and development of enterprise indicators and analysis of enterprise data, following which individual enterprise clinics were conducted and enterprise reports prepared. This assessment has been conducted using RAPMODS, one of NPCC benchmarking tools.

As at June 2004, 50 enterprises (both textile and garment) have been assessed and each of them has received a confidential report on their productivity performance.

Based on the indicators of the enterprises, the NPCC submitted two reports to TEST on the performance of the industry, identifying areas for action. The second one is posted on the NPCC website www.npccmauritius.com.

Based on the data compiled for all the enterprises, the NPCC has also developed a database of productivity indicators for the Mauritian textile and garment industry. This database can be used for benchmarking purposes, monitoring improvements in the long term and further identifying areas for action.

The industry analysis performed in Level I Assessment identified five main areas for action:

• Productivity Improvement

• Financial Management

• International Marketing

• Productivity Planning and Budgeting

• Technical skills upgrading

As a follow-up to this Level I Assessment, the NPCC carried out in-plant productivity improvement programmes, through five-day Gemba Kaizen interventions. From December 2003 to June 2004, eleven workshops had been implemented in nine enterprises, manufacturing mainly shirts, t-shirts, trousers, suits and beachwear. The workshops focussed on pre-production (including marketing, orders processing and production planning) and production processes, storage and inventory of raw materials and accessories, production layout and communication.

The main results achieved are as follows:

Other achievements concern the improved response to customer requests and faster processing of orders before production launching.

Benchmarking

In order to promote the use of enterprise-level productivity benchmarks and the practice of benchmarking among local firms, training programmes for enterprises have been conducted in the following fields: productivity benchmarking using RAPMODS, BenchmarkIndex and THE FiT (benchmarking for apparel enterprises).

12 organisations have been sensitised on the use of BenchmarkIndex, developed by the Department of Trade and Industry of UK. This tool consists of a database of benchmarks based on indicators from more than 6,500 enterprises in 15 countries, mainly in Europe. The NPCC staff received training from BENSA (South Africa) consultant Mr Fanie Bosch.

THE FiT, a software-based and market-oriented benchmarking tool, developed by the ITC (International Trade Centre) was presented to garment SMEs who could compare and position their performance with other national and international firms, on a completely confidential basis. Performance measurement criteria were supplied by major buyers in the US, EU and Japan AND Mauritian garment manufacturers can benchmark with enterprises in countries such as Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, India, Cambodia and Lesotho. Four enterprises submitted their data and received their benchmarking reports. The ITC has appointed the NPCC as its national partner for THE FiT in Mauritius.

Benchmarking for insurance sector

In the period October to November 2003, a benchmarking exercise was carried out for the insurance sector at the request of an important insurance company using the RAPMODS and BenchmarkIndex tools. The exercise was based on data from the published annual reports of eight insurance companies, over three years.

Process benchmarking on customer care

The Commonwealth Secretariat sponsored two Australian experts Messrs Richard Barton and Robert Mann to assist NPCC in implementing a benchmarking project on customer care processes. 40 organisations, public and private, participated in this project. To facilitate the transfer of knowledge on good customer care practices, two benchmarking visits were organised: the first one at the VAT department (November 2003) and the second one at the Management Audit Bureau (January 2004). Six organisations benefited from these visits.

 

Promotion of Innovation

Three major projects marked the financial year 2003-2004:

• the launching of the first Innovators Mauritius Award

• the planning of the National Innovation Summit and

• the participation of Mauritian artists and inventors in the fifth Genius Europe held in Budapest.

Innovators Mauritius Award

On 26 April, which also marked the International Day for Protection of Property Rights, Honourable Sangeet Fowdar, minister of Training, Skills Development, Productivity and External Communications, proceeded with the official launching of the Innovators Mauritius Award at Kart Loisirs, Petite Rivière. This projects fits in a broader strategy to develop an innovation culture at all levels of the Mauritian society.

Kart Loisirs was identified as it was decided to organise the launching in a place that was completely unusual, which offered an open view and where one could see far ahead. The idea was to come out of traditional conference settings and eventually of our conventional thinking patterns.

The theme for the first edition is Sweet Mauritius. People of Mauritian origin, irrespective of their age, activity and place of residence, would be invited to come up with new processes and products, using sugar (crystallized refined sugar, excluding molasses, bagasse, fangourin or other sugar cane derivatives) as their source product. Sugar was chosen because it is readily available in any home all year round. The organisation of this award fits in NPCC’s general strategy to develop an innovation culture at all levels of the Mauritian society and to convey the message that innovation is within the reach of anybody. The award would, in fact, aim to trigger a brainstorming not only in Mauritius but also among people of Mauritian origin living abroad.

The theme was worked out by Vino Sookloll, member of the PC (Productivity Committee) on Innovation and managing director of CREAD.

The judgement criteria of the Award were worked out by a technical committee including representatives from l’AHRIM, (Association des Hôteliers et Restaurateurs de l’ile Maurice) – Nizam Peeroo; l’Aventure du Sucre – Adolphe Vallet; CREAD – Vino Sookloll; Industrial Property Office, ministry of Foreign Affairs – Marie-José Neta: ISSCT (International Society of Sugar Cane Technologists) – Claude Ricaud and MCCI (Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry) – Barlen Pillai and Anjana Khemraz. All the members are knowledgeable in the fields of science/ sugar technology/ property and proprietary rights.

The Award was widely publicised through advertisement, press articles, interviews and other tv programmes. Brochures were dispatched locally and abroad - to all Mauritian diplomatic and commercial missions abroad, all foreign embassies, consulates and high commissions in Mauritius, various associations of Mauritians abroad etc, with a view to reach out for talented Mauritians living abroad.

The deadline for submission of entries was 10 August 2004. The ceremony of presentation of rewards to the winners was to be organised in September 2004.

This Award Nite would be the culmination of a two-day National Innovation Summit organised on 8-9 September 2004.

National Innovation Summit

In May-June 2004, pre-summit discussions were organised on a series of themes so as to be able to have focused discussions during the summit and to come up with action-oriented strategies. The themes were as follows:

• Country Experiences – Learning from Others

• Finding new Sources of Competitiveness

• Living in the Information Age

• Is ICT a tool or innovation?

• Building an Innovative Nation

• How can the Citizen be a Driver of Innovation?

• Financing Innovation. Are Ideas Enough?

Major stakeholders were identified and multidisciplinary and cross-functional groups were formed. The pre-summit discussions were held in camera to allow the free flow of ideas, especially those that are unconventional.

In addition to these pre-summit discussions, the NPCC invited papers from professionals likely to contribute in the thinking process on how to set up an innovation system and develop an innovation culture in Mauritius. All the papers have been posted on NPCC website http//www.npccmauritius.com.

A call for exhibits was also launched so as to highlight, during the National Innovation Summit, innovations - incremental and breakthrough - carried out by organisations in their supply chain.

Participation of Mauritian artists and inventors in the Fifth Genius Europe

Within the strategy to build up the momentum for the Innovators Mauritius Award and in view of motivating and giving exposure to Mauritian artists and inventors, NPCC facilitated the participation of 12 Mauritian artists and inventors in the Fifth Genius Europe, an international exhibition of inventions, works of fine and applied arts, organized by the Association of Hungarian Inventors, on 1-4 may 2004, at the Budapest Fair Centre, in Hungary. Dr Andrew Yeung received the Jeromos prize for his automatic capillary irrigation and artificial lung system. St Jerome is in fact the saint patron of the Association of Hungarian Inventors.

Dr Siddick Maudarbocus was rewarded for his research in bio-energy and Mr Kris Panchoo for devising a triangular and panoramic system of football soccer refereeing.

A joint certificate of participation was also delivered for all the other participants, namely:

INVENTION

Rajendra BALKEE: World Tour Race – A new board game

ART

Dino VISHAL: Graphic artwork – Foetus I

Ravi JETSHAN: Titanium and gold ring

Nirmala LUCKEENARAIN: Street life; Sega; Through (3 paintings)

Said HOSSANEE: Bird series (2 paintings)

Francoise HARDY: Painting - Between Heaven and Earth (3 paintings)

Satiadanand GOPEE: Bamboo jewellery box

Bani Kamna SONNAR: Sea urchin fancy jewellery

Vikram MEETOOK: Yacht Cumberland 1808 – wall decoration

The registration of the last three participants was coordinated by the NHPA (National Handicraft Promotion Authority). The certificates were presented to the participants by Sir Anerood Jugnauth, G.C.S.K, K.C.M.G, Q.C, president of the Republic, during the opening ceremony of the National Innovation Summit, in September 2004.

Innovation Mark

The Productivity Committee on Innovation approved the launching of an Innovation Mark during the Award Nite. The main aim of this Mark is to recognise and reward private and public organisations that would have demonstrated how innovation had resulted in an improved competitive position. The mark also aims to make innovation visible: it has been designed, by CREAD, in a way that it is easily identifiable, it can be displayed on any product, be easy to reproduce in one single colour, in any size; and be easy to reproduce in woven/ knitted/ painted styles.

The Mark would be registered as a trade mark.

InnovEd

A project proposal, targeting students of 4-15 years, aimed to focus on innovation and invention as problem-solving tools was elaborated by the NPCC . The project, which is based on the Swedish model called Snilleblixtarna and adopted by seven countries, has a strong Science and Technology base and would build on what has already been achieved through the CATs (Civic Action Teams). The project was approved by the PC on Innovation and the Executive Committee of the NPCC before being sent to the minister of Education and Scientific Research. The project was worked out upon the request of the minister.

Développement d’une Culture de l’Innovation

The PC on Innovation which regroups some 25 institutions invited its members to devote a slot on innovation in all their major activities. As such, the Mauritius Chamber of Agriculture devoted the third day of its Symposium on Agriculture, to Innovation. The then chairman of the NPCC, J. Poncini, made a presentation on ‘Développement d’une Culture de l’Innovation’.

Quelle innovation pour l’agriculture mauricienne?

Marc D’Aoust of CRDA (Centre de Recherche et de Développement sur les Aliments) of Canada, conducted a workshop on ‘Quelle innovation pour l’agriculture mauricienne?’, targeted at the working group on Innovation and Agribusiness, members of the task force on Agribusiness, representatives of research institutions, of the ministry of Agriculture, Food Technology & Natural Resources and of operators of the Mauritian agribusiness sector. It was proposed to make of Réduit, which already houses training and research institutions, a technopole.

Building Blocks for Innovation

Several activities on Building Blocks for Innovation conducted by Dinesh Korjan, expert from Ahmedabad, India, and targeting various audiences such as teachers and management staff of schools, secondary school and design school students, manufacturers of footwear, were organised. This was an opportunity to diversify our sources of expertise in the field of innovation.

National Productivity and Competitiveness Council

7th floor, St James Court

St. Denis Street, Port Louis.

Tel: (230) 211 8118, Fax: (230) 211 8056

Email: natpro@intnet.mu

Web Address: www.npccmauritius.com