Monday 23rd February 2004

That's a Good Idea

Ask and ye shall be told

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Ideas from employees at BMW Group’s Oxford plant, home of MINI, have saved £10.5 million in the past two years.

Every employee at the plant is set a target of implementing three ideas a year to improve the business. 11,064 ideas were put into practice from a total of 14,333 submitted in 2003.

The suggestions ranged from simple things such as saving unnecessary paper through to more complex engineering solutions to improve production processes like the development of a new overhead assister to enable equipment to be fed through the MINI bodyshell as it moves through the paint shop.

Savings of over £43 million were achieved in 2003 from similar schemes throughout BMW Group’s global production network of 24 production plants located in 15 different countries.

[Dan]

Haven't volvo been doing this for years??

and I think their Scheme provides financial rewards at a % value to employees who come up with ideas that improve efficiency or save money.

[deltaf]

Yeah....save the company 43 million and get sweet f/a for your trouble....
Whyd they not split it between the workers...woulda been a ncie xmas bonus apiece...

[crankedup]

Ford operated a incentive for suggestions put into production some twenty odd years ago. My Fatherinlaw suggested a saving of about 6 inches of electrical wire use on each car. He was presented with a set of foglamps.

[smele]

It sounds like they are building on the old Rover employee suggestions scheme, which had the highest participation rates of any employee suggestion scheme in the industry.

[Frik]

Didn't Vauxhall do this as well?

[srider]

Frik said:

Didn't Vauxhall do this as well?

Yes, I went on a tour of Luton a couple of years ago and they mentioned it then. I highly recommend a tour round a modern car plant btw.

[Kurgis]

Most modern companies do this sort of thing..

Depends whether they listen though, in this case looks good - shame my workplace don't listen, but then maybe I shouldn't swear in my ideas, i'd get a better response

[CarZee]

smele said:

It sounds like they are building on the old Rover employee suggestions scheme, which had the highest participation rates of any employee suggestion scheme in the industry.

probably why they're such shite cars..

An amalgum of unionised luddite Brummy ideas about what a car should be... remember the Simpsons episode where Homer ruined his brothers car company by designing his new model? Yeah....