Electro-Mech Engineering

COMPANY PROFILE

2015

Electro-Mech Engineering

company profile

Furnishing Botswana Editorial: Ajuanne Payne

Electro-Mech Engineering (EME Furniture) is a Southern African furniture manufacturer that has been established for 35 years. The Motswana family business has been run by second generation Operations Director, Nikhil Mistry, for over 10 years and in this issue of IndustrySA he expands on the solid operating principles that have contributed to the business’s steady growth.

Situated in Botswana’s capital city, Gaborone, Electro-Mech Engineering (EME Furniture)is a privately owned family business specialising in the manufacture of quality steel furniture and equipment.

From its relatively humble beginnings in 1980 with just 6 employees, EME Furniture has flourished over the past 35 years and is today the largest manufacturing facility of its type in Botswana, employing 40 staff members.

With a fully equipped, world-class factory facility and superior technical knowledge that has been built up over many years in business, EME Furniture’s strength lies in its ability to cater for large projects spanning the entire country for schools, offices, homes, government departments

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and industrial clients.

Known for its ability to provide a customised, tailored approach, EME Furniture has gained a reputation for quality and efficiency and prides itself on the hard work and high levels of service its staff members provide.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS Speaking about the beginnings of his family’s manufacturing business, current Managing Director, Nikhil Mistry explains that: “The company is in its 35th year, it was established in 1980 and it’s a family run business - I am the second generation of family running it. It was started by my dad and in the beginning was just making simple furniture for furniture shops.

“At that time Botswana was 15 years on from

Electro-Mech Engineering

independence, there was very little here. We were starting a new life and basically just trying to make a living and 35 years on its grown quite significantly.

“I have been running the company since 2004, but before that as a youngster I used to intern here and spent a lot of time here, so it’s been a business I have been involved with for my entire life.”

cabinets, desks, chairs, lockers, beds, so on - that’s our core market.

“We also dabble in a few other areas, we produce furniture for contract office suppliers and customised offices, as well as the more industrial range of products - we do lockers for factories, shelving and racking, we do bulk filing products, such as mobile shelving cabinets and the associated products with that.”

MAIN OPERATIONS Today, EME Furniture focuses primarily on the education market, supplying primary and secondary schools as well as the tertiary education market.

“We focus in on the secondary and primary schools, in that order,” explains Nikhil, “so we design, we produce, we install, we maintain, we support all the products that schools use including

RESPONDING TO THE MARKET Botswana’s National Development Plan (NDP) is the government roadmap for the progression of the country’s economy and the wellbeing of its people. It sets out strategic targets based around the underpinning principles of democracy, development, dignity, discipline and delivery in

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company profile

order to encourage the talents, creativity, hard work and discipline of all Botswana citizens and promote economic development.

Since the country’s independence in 1966 there has been significant transformation of its economy into one of a more upper middle-income status and the country has been making strides in its investments into infrastructure and stability Botswana is undoubtedly one of the countries perceived to be most safe in the African continent.

For a business such as EME Furniture, these notable developments in the country’s infrastructure have contributed significantly to its success and growth over the years, which is one of the reasons why the company has only recently started looking at venturing into exporting.

“We have started exporting,” explains Nikhil, “but I think as we have for the past 35 years and for the next 5 years, we will be focusing primarily on Botswana. In terms of what’s going to happen here, Botswana’s always had a strong national development plan from the early days of government, and most of the schools that we supply, most of the contracts we do are with government, so we see a lot of schools

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still coming down the road, there’s a lot of construction happening, there’s a lot of renovation, refurbishments happening.

“From a product perspective, we’re excited about our new range of bulk filing products, the line is very strong” “We know that the demand for our products will be strong in the next two to three years at a minimum and we’re hoping that will stretch to at least five years. Also with Botswana being the

Electro-Mech Engineering strongest producer of gem-quality diamonds in the world, this has brought the international diamond trading offices into Botswana which is bringing a lot of international attention into the country.

“There’s been a bit of a spike in demand for office furniture and our office products, so we’re hoping that that demand will continue and that we can make some new relationships with the diamond factories and diamond trading companies.”

A LEAN TRANSFORMATION Following what Nikhil anticipates as being a busy few years for his business in Botswana, EME Furniture is preparing now for what may come – potentially a plateau in demand in the next decade when the country’s rapid rate of growth slows down. The company is looking at expanding its reach further into Sub-Saharan Africa in the next five years in order to diversify its market areas.

Aside from the need to look at expanding footprint and product offering, as a large manufacturer perhaps the most important thing for EME Furniture is to invest in the modernising and streamlining of its operations. Rather than waiting on corrective action in the eventuality that something in its processes goes awry, EME Furniture is pre-emptively investing in the continuous improvement of its production facilities and practices.

“We’re undergoing quite significant changes in our production facility as we speak. It’s a project that we embarked on in January of this year and we’re basically going through a lean transformation project,” explains Nikhil.

“It being an old company, the machinery is quite dated, the production practices are quite dated and they’ve been good enough to survive the company up to this point, but looking at the next 10 to 20 years they really need to be modernised. So, at the beginning of this year we decided to implement a complete overhaul and transformation of the way we build our products. It’s basically the same way the Japanese built the first Corolla’s and Camrys way back in the early 70’s and it’s been developed into a worldwide standard as a way to manufacture.”

What Nikhil is referring to is EME Furniture’s decision to adopt the Kaizen approach to its manufacturing process. Beginning life just after World War II, the Kaizen method focuses on ‘Improving constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and

productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs’ and was made famous by Toyota as a method which takes into account the input of all staff members to make constant minor improvements in process before a problem arises. The power of this method is in the many small improvements that combine to continuously move the business forward.

“It’s moving away from a push production to a pull production system,” explains Nikhil, “basically eliminating any kind of waste, whether it be in the design, the actual manufacture, the supply, the maintenance, the procurement of materials needed to produce the goods and so on – it’s quite a significant project for us.

“We’ve started projects to address a lot of key areas in the factory, the way products move around the factory, the way we use our tools, the way we store our products, the way we manage and maintain our machines, the way we solve problems together, it’s basically transforming the core of how we do business and it’s the biggest change that we’re going through internally.”

Not only is EME Furniture investing in a fresh approach to its manufacturing process, but it has

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company profile

also diversified into new product areas recently. “From a product perspective, we’re excited about our new range of bulk filing products, the line is very strong, it’s going, it’s a new product for us, we’re excited about it,” says Nikhil.

“It’s a very exportable product because it comes in knock-down form and they’re not fully assembled at the factory, they’re installed at the client’s site and we’ve been able to hit the market with great quality and prices - from the sales that I see, the market is responding to our product so I’m hoping that that will grow.

“Also one of our core products used to be fully-steel kitchens and we got knocked out of that market in 2006 because of Chinese imports. I’m looking at it again because demand is slowly creeping back, we’re

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getting enquiries, we’re getting invitations for tender, so there seems to be some kind of bounce back in the market that may have been due to a backlash of quality issues, or pricing issues on the import side. So, I’m encouraged by that, it’s on my radar that we may start doing kitchens again if the margins have recovered.”

A SUCCESSFUL OPERATION One of the key advantages for EME Furniture is its regional location, when compared with its international competitors operating in Botswana. One of the ways it beats its competitors is on its service delivery – the company is able to cost-efficiently deliver its furniture products fully assembled, something the importers cannot consider due to the high cost.

Electro-Mech Engineering

Another contributor to the company’s long-term success has been its ability to retain staff and its commitment to reinvesting in the business.

“Our average employee tenure is over 10 years, we have about 40 employees in our factory and more than half of them have been with us for more than a decade. Most of them joined the company as unskilled employees, so all of the training that they’ve received has been on the job training,” explains Nikhil.

Finding good people is a challenge, so EME Furniture has ensured over the years that when it has found them, it keeps them, promoting happy staff and retaining valuable skills within the business.

“That’s been one of the key aspects of why we’re still here – many other companies have tried and failed and I feel it’s because they haven’t reinvested in

their people and their machinery. In this business you become outdated very quickly,” says Nikhil, “being frugal with our cash and reinvesting what cash we had available back into the business, rather than taking holidays and fancy cars.”

“And then, it’s something that I’ve learnt from my father and it’s a culture that’s bled through the company is that we don’t compromise on quality to achieve price. Where others may say I can make this product for you cheaper by using a thinner gauge of steel etc., we’d rather turn the business away than compromise our quality and our name.

“I think that has helped us a lot, our product and our brand is associated with quality. We’re a leader in our sector in terms of quality,” Nikhil concludes

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