Smart Productivity

In an endeavor to find practical and attractive approaches for industries to deal with productivity, quality and innovations for sustainable competitive advantage, EWI has tackled the issue with the concept of SMARTProductivity (SP). In concrete terms, SP aims at integrating innovations and quality with organization productivity, thus giving a competitive edge to businesses in the age of globalization.

The concept was developed by EWI in 2000 and the term was coined by the founder and Master in Productivity Specialist, Edward Whistler Goh.

The Goal of SP is to attain a higher level of productivity through optimal deployment of identified intellectual capital & assets within the organization, whilst simultaneously maintaining and/or improving quality of products and services produced. To substantiate the SP concept, ICPD has adopted a multi-dimensional micro-to-macro approach to promote SP practices. It focuses on the enterprise level through the applications of productivity and quality management tools – Total Quality Management, 5S, Business Process Reengineering, etc. – that go in tandem with innovations and intellectual property management systems. Initially taking off in the industrial sector, SP is now being increasingly applied to retail, service industry, and even social communities. SP is thus evolving as a drive with comprehensive strategies for sustainable techno-economic development.

To operationalize SP at practical levels, EWI has developed a 3-phase approach, 4-stage methodology incorporating Edward Deming’s plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle, Kaoru Ishikawa Performance Improvement Cycle and an international framework for Intellectual Property Management. This approach and methodology has been successfully applied in the past several tears throughout Asia in various SP implementation programs and has been found to be very effective and productive. While the PDCA framework provides the basic skeleton of SP implementation, the distinctive part of SP methodology is its ever-expanding set of innovative tools and techniques to complement the PDCA framework. This methodology has been thus field-tested and is being taught and implemented through various industries in the region.