CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 22

GEMBA

T

oday, businesses compete on a
global scale. It is no longer good
enough just to be good enough.
Today you have to take on the
world: a world that is constantly changing.
And to do that, you have to do what you
do faster, cheaper, better.
It is a point Mike Wolhuter, the managing
director of Pressure Die Castings (PDC)
is making as we tour his factory in
Pietermaritzburg. As its name suggests, PDC
makes and assembles die-cast products. It
operates primarily in six different markets:
fire protection, electrical distribution,
building hardware, automotive, plumbing
and LED lighting.
The nature of PDC’s business is the production of many identical parts. Getting
those parts perfect and produced at globally competitive prices is their challenge
and for Wolhuter, an engineer by profession, the solution is obvious — automate.
“If we want to compete against global
competitors like the Chinese,” he says, “we
can’t compete on labour.”
The company’s latest acquisition, an
automated line for assembling aluminium
door and window handles, can now
achieve with just three people what would
have taken a team of 20 to do previously.
And with manual labour, Wolhuter points
out, they would have seen 20% of products
being dropped as rejects, whereas with
automation that figure is virtually zero.
Even the company’s quality control
for the roof-mounted fire sprinklers they
manufacture for an American customer is
done by a machine: two cameras check —
to within 10 microns’ accuracy — that the
sprinklers conform to the right dimensions,
while an acoustic system checks for
micro cracks that would otherwise go
undetected.
“With this product, we’re making
something that we hope the customer
never has to use,” muses Wolhuter as we
watch a conveyor belt feed the sprinklers
into the quality-control machine. But even
though each sprinkler may only have to
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| Issue 1 | Capital

A robotic arm at Pressure Die Castings perform
perfect part after another. It is difficult to argu
perfectly standardised workfl
work once, it has to work perfectly.
For Wolhuter, machines present the best
way to achieve this guarantee of perfection.
He stands and watches a robotic arm
as it performs its choreographed dance,
never missing a beat or falling out of
step. It is mesmerising to watch: with
fluid, economical movements like those
of a skilled martial artist, it delicately
presents a part to a heavy press and waits
for it to slam down. Time and again it
performs the move: never tiring, never
losing focus, its apparent powers of
concentration akin to those of a Zen master.