Analysing the data

And suddenly, after looking through my notes and reading the articles it’s time to analyse the data. O my, so much data and so little time!

Even though we like to say to ourselves that we are good, almost perfect, there is always something that we can improve. In this case is the company really good at what they do so it has been hard to find things to improve. Well, it might also have something to do with the fact that the company is working within an industry that I have not been looking closer on before. This field study has been interesting and fun, and I must say that I have learned a lot during this time. Think that there are so many things that can affect a company, so many things that you usually do not think about… 

Now I must return to my paper, so little time and so much to write! Even though this will be my last post, there is still much to learn before presenting and I do not doubt that I will continue to learn about this subject for many years to come.

Visiting the company

A few days ago I had the great fortune to visit the company I have chosen to work with, Industri-Textil Job AB, and chat with the Group Director Rutger Bornefalk.

Industri-Textil Job AB has a broad spectrum of products ranging from filters for industrial manufacturing to bulletproof vests with factories in several countries. Despite being categorised as a SME (small and medium-sized enterprise), the company shows a variety of products and product categories that in my opinion is remarkable.

Rutger and I had a lovely conversation for over three hours, with a pause for fika, about the company and gave me products worth (I think) 600 005 SEK (close to 65000 euro)! He was very determined that I should mention this since he wished to mess with the other students heads (“-Look what that girl got, she got products worth 65000 euro!”). Well, it is two really cool products but they might not look that interesting since it is two pieces of non-woven textiles used in the industry. As the designs of the products are a secret I now have one cheap product (5SEK/ 50 cent in Euro) and one really expensive one (600 000 SEK/ a bit less than 65 000 euro) that I have absolutely no idea what they are used for… 

Sara Jonsson, TASTE13 (Master programme in textile management with specialisation textile value chain management)

What do we really know about it?

In the previous post I mentioned how different crises have different types of impact on the company and it is now the fun starts! After being a pessimist and looking into all the things that can go pear-shaped we now have to find out what we can do about it.  If we start to rank the risks and making a prioritising list, the things that are most important soon starts to stand out from the crowd. Are there any parts in the manufacturing that are essential, are there any weak links in the logistics department, and is the safety measures for the employees up to scratch to mention a few.

But here we must also realise that there are things that does not show up as a threat even though they are just that. In the book ‘Building a Resilient Enterprise’ by Yossi Sheffi, the author presents that the near misses often are warnings of disasters that can happen in the future. A good example of this is my father’s quest for increasing the safety for the road workers and how they did not think about the near misses, when things could have gone horribly wrong but did not. As often is the case, they did not reflect on the near misses since nothing really happened but by talking about it on a meeting the reports of the near misses grew and the company got more information, and could therefore prevent injuries in the future. This is a good example of how there exist information about risks among the employees but that it not always finds its way up the chain of command to those that can prevent them.

So to conclude this post: If you see something that can go wrong, tell people about it and make sure that your superiors and co-workers are aware of it even though they might not like what you are saying, in the words of Margaret Heffernan: “Dare to disagree!”

Sara Jonsson, TASTE13 (Master programme in textile management with specialisation textile value chain management)

What am I supposed to do about that? A quest to improve resilience

During the recent course ‘Risk and Resilience in Textile Supply Chains’ my interest for how different companies handles unforeseen events was sparked and I started to look at companies in a new way.  Suddenly I looked at all the problems that can occur and what impact it can have on the different companies, how the weather changes the need and sale of different clothing (as the abundance of winter jackets that I see here in rainy Borås), and when a supplier suddenly shuts down without warning its customers (as when my local yarn store suddenly found itself without its biggest yarn supplier). The problems I have presented are in a sense trivial but they can have a great impact on the store.

Well, above I presented two examples on how a crisis can affect the retailer but it is the same thing further up the chain. As a supplier and manufacturer the main goal is to provide the products you have agreed on to your customer and this is not always as easy as it seems… There are raw material shortages, environmental disasters, change of government regulations, acts of terrorism, launch of new products by competitors etc., and the further you know, the more things you start to worry about. But as you start to worry, you will also have the opportunity to do something about it! By understanding the threats the company is faced with, you can also make decisions to decrease the possibility of crises.

The aim of this report is to look into how one specific Small and Medium-sized Company (SME) can improve its resilience and later on present my findings to the company (that I will keep anonymous unless the representative says something else). In contrast to many others I am not doing an internship but a field study so the layout of my blogposts will be somewhat different. Despite the fact that my work will be a bit theoretical and not provide fun learnings about how it is to work at a textile company I do hope that you will find my blogposts just as exiting and that they will spark an interest for the subject.

Sara Jonsson, TASTE13 (Master programme in textile management with specialisation textile value chain management)