Once more, we have come to this special time of the year. We have set up the Christmas tree at the office and at home. For me, Christmas always brings back childhood memories of family members reunited on snowy days.

The special “Lean Manufacturing” issue of our newsletter, published in June 2010, turned out to be very controversial. I perhaps should not have been surprised, as the title of my editorial was a punchy “Lean & TPM: beyond the hype, delivering sustainable results”… I highlighted the specifities of maintenance in China, which we are rather familiar with, and explained why they should be taken into account: a Lean production process puts enormous pressure on equipment reliability, a major weakness at most plants. One of the key points I raised was the necessity to reduce the breakdown rate before implementing autonomous maintenance activities as part of...

Established in 1997, Saint-Gobain Pipelines (China) owns plants located in Maanshan, Anhui Province and Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, producing ductile iron pipes & fitting, for both the domestic and export markets.

This month’s Tips & Tricks section is the first to be dedicated to bluebee® cloud.

Most Siveco team members, minus people stuck on projects in remote parts of China, were gathered to celebrate the birthdays of several of our colleagues: Bruno (GM), Fiona (Marketing/VAPP), Lin Min (Product) and Peter Xian (Project).

People often ask me who my competitors are. Truth is, our single biggest competitor is “doing nothing”. The single biggest obstacle to our business, with multinationals, is “but we don’t do it that way back home”. With Chinese companies, it is more like “your approach so different from all your competitors”.