When the position of production manager became vacant at UFAB Shanghai in China, the role was shared between three young employees who have been involved from the start.
In the picture (from left to right) Case Liu, Eric Li, Oscar Shen and Chris Ma.
“I am extremely proud of how, with our strong corporate culture, we are galvanising our staff to dare to take responsibility and submit suggestions for improvements,” says Per Ohlsson, General Manager at UFAB Shanghai.
UFAB’s Swedish corporate culture, and the working methods we are used to seeing at Swedish workplaces, cannot be taken for granted in China. There is a different culture and different hierarchies in working life. It is also rare for young employees and those without a university education to be able to climb up through a company.
“These are three young, hungry guys who have been with us from the start – in fact, they were our first three employees. By Chinese standards, we generally have a low staff turnover. With their high level of technical expertise combined with a lot of good ideas, they have now been given the opportunity jointly to shoulder the responsibility for production.
Through daily meetings, they each take responsibility for different areas linked to production. As a production technician, Case Liu will be taking responsibility for the programmes. Oscar Shen will be responsible for planning and the purchase of tools. Working together, Oscar and Case will be categorising the articles in our production process so that we can reduce the number of active tools. Eric Li will have operational responsibility in the production process to ensure that the planning that has been put in place is carried out. By way of support, the three will initially be backed up by Chris Ma, our Quality Manager.
“In their new roles, the guys, who themselves started out as operators, will now be continuing to pick up on the many good ideas of our operators,” explains Per Ohlsson.
Picture 1: Eric Li, Chris Ma and operator Fan Deng Ke.
Picture 2: Case Liu and Oscar Chen are inspecting programs.
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