Overview
The aim of the operational excellence programme is to assist member firms to upgrade their manufacturing competitiveness and ensure compliance with all necessary and changing legislative requirements. Safety, Health, Environment and Quality (SHEQ) have been identified as areas where firms need to be able to comply with an increasingly complex set of requirements, often within an unresponsive and inefficient regulatory environment, in a cost-effective manner.
Quarterly Knowledge Sharing and Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Sessions
Capacity building is provided to member firms in the form of structured learning sessions and best practice plant tours to support interpretation and implementation of SHEQ legal and standard requirements, as well as lean and green manufacturing principles. These sessions also incorporate the operational excellence programme quarterly TSC meetings.
SHEQ Compliance Support
The DCC promotes compliance, and member firms’ licence to operate, through the following mechanisms:
- Continue to research environmental and related compliance legislation that is planned and will impact member firms. The DCC will continue to ensure this is communicated to member firms via email notifications and quarterly updates. The DCC will also continue to provide a full SHEQ legal register, updated annually.
- Assist member firms in addressing the inefficiencies in processing documentation and proactively engaging with local and national government stakeholders to reduce compliance turnaround times. The approach requires stronger engagements with local and national government stakeholders, opening the doors of DCC forums for stakeholder engagement and leveraging the weight of the DCC and its 58 members to advocate for improved and efficient service.
Sustainability, Benchmarking and Lean Skill Strengthening
Through the DCC’s sustainability benchmarking programme, the cluster maintains an element of performance monitoring on lean/manufacturing, financial, social and environmental performance. Performance data is essential for firms to understand their operational performance and in turn prioritise greener, leaner and more socially responsible operations.
COVID-19 Response Recovery Support
a. Operations and Supply Chain Working Groups – Peer learning focused on understanding and mitigating the impacts of the COVID-19 recession on company operational performance and supply chains.
b. Risk mitigation modelling – Supporting firms to understand their risk profile and areas of business and operational risk associated with COVID-19.
c. Supply chain and supplier risk modelling – Understanding the risk of supplier non-performance and delays on business; mapping supplier risk for informed decision making.