| PHAROS Programme in continuous
improvement of enterprises in Colombia by UNIDO: main events of March
2003 Overview of workshops, meetings and public events.
The UNIDO programme in Colombia "Introduction of
continuous improvement practices into selected enterprises in 4
regions of Colombia" (later named in Colombia by industrialists as
"Pharos programme") started in December 2001 as pilot project to verify
methodology and implementation in different industrial sectors. Its
first phase included training of national consultants and executives
from 4 regions in key industries as follows: Bogotá (leather
industry), Eje Cafetero (electronics), Ibague (textile) and
Barrancabermeja (metal processing). The project included training of
entrepreneurs and installation of UNIDO PHAROS
software to be used as manager information tool for business performance
monitoring. The development of
continuous improvement practices based on using Pharos became the main project target at
its second stage.
Several workshops and meetings took place in Colombia in March 2003
within the implementation of this project exactly one year after the first training
in 2002. The objectives were in reviewing intermediate results of the Project and
obtaining the feedback of its participants. Brief overview of the main
events is presented below.
Pereira,
Eje Cafetero.
Project status: The pilot enterprises are from electronics /
electro-technical industrial sector. The Project implementation had
been very successful, the results are positive and measurable. There
are strong intentions of the regional counterparts to expand the
project accommodating many other enterprises which expressed
intentions to take part in the new larger programme for the region.
Much of the achievements were the result of the efficient work of Mr.
Luis Gonzalo Bernal, national consultant and support by Mr. Felipe
Gonzalez, Director of CORDELEC (Electronics and Electric´s Chain of
Eje Cafetero) and regional Chamber of Commerce. The overall situation
in the region is illustrated by publication
in the newspaper "El Diario del Otún" on 2 March 2003. Another
publication was made by “La Tarde”, newspaper in Pereira on the same
day.
Regional Project Advisory Committee Meeting of Eje Cafetero in
the Chamber of Commerce took place on 11/03/03 and was opened by Mr. Felipe
Gonzalez, Director of CORDELEC (Electronics and Electric´s Chain of Eje
Cafetero) who covered the issues of Project implementation in Pereira,
achievements and prospects of its continuation. The Committee members
representing Chamber of Commerce, CORDELEC, the University of Quindío,
Technical University of Pereira and SENA, expressed satisfaction with
the results of the project in the Eje Cafetero region. 
The Committee was enthusiastic in the evaluation the benefits of the Pharos
software and continuous improvement methodology introduced to participating enterprises.
The members pointed out that it brought up
a new paradigm for the managerial culture of the SMEs in the Coffee Axis
region by forcing industrialists translating planned strategies into
numbers and starting working with indicators and PCs. The software
became an integral part of the overall UNIDO methodology, supporting
implementation continuous improvements and it is actively used by
the management of participating companies as it is easy to work with. As general observation, the
companies which took part in ISO 9000 certification had shown greater
speed of acceptance of the continuous improvements methodology and
PHAROS tools, however all companies which started practical applications
had significant progress in productivity, quality, competitiveness,
overall company performance.
Pilot enterprise "Integrando Ltda"., Dosquebradas, Risaralda.
The industrial enterprise "Integrando Ltda". achieved significant
progress in the development of its competitiveness, productivity and
efficiency of its own available resources usage during the participating
in the Project. Mr. César
Augusto Herrera, General Manager of Integrando
Ltda, is active user of PHAROS software, developing innovative
applications had improved his company performance up to 28% for the
passed 9 months.
Workshop with pilot companies in the Eje Cafetero
took place at Technical
University of Pereira on 12/03/04 after opening by Mr. Felipe Gonzalez, Director of
CORDELEC followed by Mrs. Liliam Ochoa, national coordinator of the
UNIDO project, Mr. Serge Golovanov, Mr. Oswaldo Rossi both UNIDO
experts, and Mr. Luis Gonzalo
Bernal, national consultant. All participants took part in the
discussions sharing their experience in developing Pharos applications
in their companies, views on the project implementation and setting new
Pharos programmes. The discussion included review of business decision
simulations based on Pharos software, presented by Mr. Serge Golovanov
and Mr. Oswaldo Rossi.
The workshop was visited by the University governor and
dean, who greeted workshop participants. They mentioned that the University
could support the programmes for SMEs in the region with know-how
regarding the use of UNIDO information technology tools for monitoring
enterprise performance and resource planning.
All the pilot project participants were presented during the workshop
and accompanied with one or several senior managers or assistants. Each
participant provided feedback regarding the experience of particular
company, obtained
results as well as desirable improvements of the software.
The common conclusion of the participants was that the project
has been very successful in
introducing improvements of the enterprise management skills, quality, productivity,
performance and competitiveness.
It actually helped to create new culture and techniques of company
management, introduce the set of indicators allowing business monitoring
and comparison between enterprises in the same sector. Consequently this
opens the opportunity for developing reference model for the national
industry.
Conference for industrialists of the region took part in the Chamber of Commerce, on 13/03/03.
It provided participants with additional information about
the objectives and content of UNIDO Programmes for continuous improvement as well as possibility for
entrepreneurs to ask the questions about its content and implementation. The methodology and first results
of the UNIDO project implementation in Colombia was presented by Dr. Oswaldo Rossi, UNIDO
International Consultant, Mrs. Liliam Ochoa and Mr. Luis Gonzalo Bernal.
During the conference interesting contribution had been provided by
Mr. César Augusto Herrera, General Manager of Integrando Ltda, who
shared his experience of participation in the pilot project with
convincing and interesting arguments about its content, possibility to
improve enterprise performance considerably, develop new business
culture and become more competitive. He outlined PHAROS benefits for
managers while comparing it to Balanced Score Card methodology.
Meeting with students and professors of the University of Quindío,
Pereira, 13/03/03
Dr. Serge Golovanov, expert and president of GOLEM IMS GMBH, was
invited by the Directorate of University of Quindío for a meeting with students and professors
to review PHAROS software, its history, describe research done while developing information tools
for SME managers and results of the UNIDO project in Colombia. The university is well established regional
educational and scientific research center preparing specialists in many
disciplines required in this quickly developing industrial region (www.uniquindio.edu.co).
Ibague
Project status: The prototype enterprises are from the textile
and cloth manufacturing sector. The industry has its specifics such as
heavy influence of seasonal production when the production is stopped
completely and many enterprises are kept closed for several months, wide
use of subcontracting in various forms including external or
semi-external enterprises called as “satellites”, quick replacement of
products with new ones, easily replaceable production personnel due to
wide supply of labor force on the local market. Mrs. Diana Ocampo, newly
appointed national consultant brought valuable and effective assistance
to participating enterprises.
Project Advisory Committee Meeting took place in
the Chamber of Commerce of
Ibagué on 14/03/2003 hosted by Mr. Gabriel Espinosa, Director of Promotion
and Development. The agenda included presentation
of the UNIDO project plans to the Committee and review of the project
implementation in the region. During the meeting the
Advisory Committee members described the situation in the regional
industry to project. Several interesting proposals were made by Mrs.
Victoria Kairuz Marquez, Director of “Centro de Productividad del Tolima”
including the effective promotion of Pharos as managerial development
strategy tool.
Workshop for pilot companies in Ibagué took place in Laboratorio Empresarial,
SENA on 14/03/2003. It provided the project participants with latest
information regarding new developments in Pharos applications,
methodology of defining target values for enterprise indicators and
benchmarking options based on Pharos database. The manager of pilot
enterprises and their assistants took active part in the
discussion asking questions and sharing views on their needs, Pharos
application developments and further participation in the Pharos
programmes. All participants recognized PHAROS as an important tool of
the management to monitor efficiency of their companies.
Conference for regional industrialists took
place in the Management
Training Center of Chamber of Commerce on 15/03/2003 providing detailed overview of UNIDO project, its objectives,
methodology and results obtained in the regions and questions and
answers.
Bogotá
Project status: The pilot enterprises are from
the leather and shoe production industrial sector. The review of the
first training course and description of the enterprises were provided
in the news of 2002. The Project implementation had been successful, the
results are positive and measurable. There is an intention of the
regional counterparts to expand the project accommodating other
enterprises which want to take part in the new follow-up programme in
the region. Much of the achievements are the result of the efficient
work and contribution of Mrs. Miryam Hurtado, national consultant and
effective support of Ms. Liliam Ochoa, National coordinator.
Training workshop for national consultants
took place at UNIDO office in Bogotá on 16-17 March 2003. It included overview of latest developments in
Pharos software such as comprehensive export/import utility, benchmarking
options and
simulations of managerial decision based on Pharos enterprise model as
well as results of the previous project stages.
Workshop for industrialists from pilot companies in Bogotá,
18/03/03 took place at University of Jorge Tadeo Lozano. The agenda of
the workshop included the following topics:
-
Pharos as a
managerial tool in the continuous improvement process, review of Pharos
application results, working with business targets and interpreting
graphs,
-
Pharos v.2
update: Import/Export module and its impact on developing main
application, simulation of the managerial decisions on business
development based on Pharos enterprise model,
-
overview of
coming release of Pharos with Produce plus and new Pharos version 3.0
features, benchmarking options with Pharos for self-evaluation
enterprise developments, questions and answers.
After the workshop there was intensive discussion, initiated by
S.Golovanov as trainer of the joint course which took exactly one year
ago in the same room. Some interesting notes made during the meeting
are presented below.
Q: What main problems entrepreneurs have had for the passed year?
A1: There was no cultural tradition regarding management and use of
information technology in enterprises, collection and entering data,
systematic analysis of various performance aspects;
A2: Several managers mentioned that they cannot plan their business for
complete next year because of market instability and seasonality. They
would like to plan company business for the next month only.
Q: What are
the benefits you obtained during the participation in the Project?
A1:
Improvements in enterprise operations, understanding of business
monitoring and its performance indicators.
A2: Detection
of problems in quality.
A3: Pharos
has been an incentive for companies to establish systematic approach to
company management, planning, having their accounting up-to-dated and
learn working on PCs.
Q: Many of
project participants expressed the wish to be able comparing the enterprise
data with the other enterprises in the same sector or internationally to
identify their business position. This is possible only if each company
agrees to provide its key indicator values (possibly anonymous) to
some centralized server which process it and gives access to all entrepreneurs
for comparing themselves to others via Internet. Would you be
ready to share such key information?
A: About 80% of
presented managers answered positively, one manager gave
definite negative answer (possibly he did not understand that not all
company data should be shared but only selected key indicators), and one
abstained.
Q: If you are offered to pay for the after project support what would
you expected in return? Answers (combined)
• time support provided
• external consulting
in continuous improvement
• support in international marketing
especially in entering European Market
• assistance in attracting investors,
advice in credit and investment
• free updates
Some other comments
and observations by the participants:
• Technology has to be transferred not only to management but to
employees as well to be fully successful
• The software and participation in the programme had brought
significant shift in the managerial culture in the pilot companies,
which could not happened otherwise within this short period of time. It
resulted in new abilities to analyze information, collect it routinely,
and take advantage of PHAROS as managerial information tool, view
business performance and available resource usage. There are many
consequences of such considerable improvements in all
business processes, including understanding of losses which management
had been unaware of previously, commitment to systematic monitoring of
company activities, etc.
During the Advisory Committee of Bogotá Meeting, Ministry of
Commerce, Industry and Tourism, 19 March 2003, the participants
representing major industrial associations and government, were briefed
about the project status and preliminary results. With growing acceptance of
the SME importance in economics of the country, there is a need to make
its development stable and effective. Typical problems of SMEs such as
lack of qualifications, managerial culture, financial and human
resources, simple and easy IT tools for managers, inadequate monitoring
business performance, unseen losses and underutilized use of resources,
lack of competitiveness under the growing impact of globalization, late
response to problems in competitiveness, quality, productivity, sales
makes SME sustainability difficult. SMEs are of need for know-how and tools for introducing continuous
improvement practices while having fundamental limitations in obtaining
all these. There are no providers of similar service
packages for SME sector at the necessary cost- per-enterprise level
because of variety of reasons. The result is in growing unresolved
problems of SMEs and its unstable development with significant
unmonitored losses and inefficiency accumulated in the national scale.
The Pharos project in Colombia demonstrated the unique results and
potential existing in the continuous improvements programmes. It makes
possible bringing measured increase of productivity, quality,
managerial skills and competitiveness in the key industrial sectors
delivered at some acceptable cost level. The instruments of such increase
are the Programmes for SMEs involving larger number
of enterprises and delivering the unique package of
services at demand.
Barrancabermeja, Santander
Project status: The pilot enterprises are from
the metal processing industrial sector. Most of them have local large national
producer of petrochemicals “Ecopetrol Corporation” as their main
customer. The Project implementation had been very successful, the
results are positive and measurable. There is strong intention of the
regional counterparts to expand the project accommodating many other
enterprises which want to take part in the new programme in the region.
Much of the achievements are the result of the efficient work and
contribution of Mrs. Rosa Isabel Rodríguez, national consultant of the
project.
Regional Advisory Committee Meeting took part
in the Chamber of Commerce on 20/03/2003 with review of
the project implementation followed by conclusion that the project very well
accepted by enterprises, many new businesses wants to join. It already
allowed to obtain significant changes in business performance and
culture of running businesses. The questions discussed included the
issues of continuation in new format,
number of companies taking part in new programme and procedures of
enterprise certification.
The Committee members underlined that on-site training and installation
support had been very important for the
success of the project. Mr.
Dario Echeverry Serrano, Director of the
Chamber of Commerce, noted that the training of managers
has to be done during the implementation phase not before, because,
although it is known that the entrepreneurs have weaknesses, they can’t
afford to wait until every company is ready. In other words, training
has to be done on the fly.
Developing new applications at corporate level:
ECOPETROL Corporation refinery. The meeting which took
place on 20/03/03 at the corporate headquarters allowed to identify new
corporate strategy of potential PHAROS applications. Mr. Hugo Toscano,
one of the corporate managers outlined the growing need to increase the
level of the suppliers in quality, productivity and performance. The
number of such suppliers is considerable and the work on increasing
their performance is very complex but necessary in view of growing
globalization and principal need to develop national industries in
Colombia.
The positive experience of UNIDO project in Colombia
bring about the possibility to achieve such objectives within
controllable time span and feasible financial resources.
The Press Conference, which took place in the
regional Chamber of Commerce on 20/03/03 allowed local journalists to
get access to the first hand information regarding already obtained
results of the project. It was followed up by the interview given to the
local TV station about economic development in the region by project
team and one of the local entrepreneurs. Mrs. Claudia Roa Guzman,
Deputy Manager of company MEC Ltda, Barrancabermeja described her
experience of learning continuous improvement methodology and using
Pharos for changing her company performance drastically to the program
moderator Mr. Juan Carlos Sierra.
The text of the interview can be reviewed
here.
The workshop for entrepreneurs from pilot companies
in Barrancabermeja took place in computer class room of SENA training
center on 21/03/03. All managers of the pilot companies taking part in
the Project were presented at the training which was opened by Mrs. Rosa
Isabel Rodríguez, regional national consultant of the UNIDO Project
followed by Mr. Serge Golovanov. The managers were provided with
comprehensive feedback regarding the PHAROS applications, best
practices, answered multiple questions and described future
developments. The workshop participants took active part in the training
and discussions, provided stimulating feedback regarding the positive
results of the Project and showed significant interest to the project
continuation.
Meeting with students and professors of the Centro de Innovación
Tecnología y Desarrollo Empresarial (CITDE UCC), Barrancabermeja
took place in the evening on 21/03/03 by invitation of Prof. Orlando
Serrano.
The Centro is educational and training organization
preparing specialists in many disciplines required in this quickly
developing industrial region.
During the meeting the educational applications of PHAROS, main PHAROS
features and experience of its application in Colombian enterprises were
reviewed. The management described the activities of the CITRE and
mentioned the interest of including PHAROS into the courses for SME
management. It was stated that CITRE could become additional training
facility for the SME management in the Santander province. There were
questions and answers provided during the meeting regarding the
collaboration options as well as potential Pharos features and
applications.
Positive results of the 2002/2003 UNIDO Project and
accumulated expertise developed in Colombia
provide challenging prospects of delivering the unique package of services to many other Colombian SMEs
in the regions.
What participants say about the
results? review the references
here >>>.
Letter of entrepreneurs in
Eje-Cafetero province to
Colombian Ministry of Industry here >>>
UNIDO Programme for Colombia
2002-2003: one year later in 2004 Mr. Cesar Herrera, Integrando, one of
the most active participants answers to the questionnaire regarding the
achievements and
results >>>
UNIDO Programme for Colombia
2002-2003: Mrs. Claudia Guzman, Manager of MEC Ltda
evaluates the results in TV broadcast >>>
The Component II phase of UNIDO
Programme for Colombia begins, March 2002
>>>
Additional information about
Training and Upgrading Programmes for SME
>>>
Do you have some comments or look for setting
up similar programmes to improve SME performance in your country?
let us know here!
Español?
Íà đóññêî́?
汉语
Français
|
