During the last 4-5 years, Director Allan Rasmussen has successfully set up manufacturing operations in an off-shore project in Tatabanya, Hungary for Coloplast-Denmark. The project went well with and is deemed a success.
Coloplast has, to most extent, effectively come over problems due to non-documentation of manuals and transfer of knowledge from its Danish to Hungarian plant. Lessons have been learnt in Hungary with new employees being more familiar with quality and production processes than their Danish counter- parts.
The recent health care reforms in Europe coupled with changes in technology in treatment of cancer has forced Coloplast to look for ways to reduce its costs in near future to remain competitive. For this and keeping a positive experience from Hungary in mind, Coloplast is poised to make another off-shore expansion in China.
After implementing the Hungarian project, Allan Rasmussen is convinced that in order to be successful, Coloplast has to take globalization as a whole. Reason being, the current management setup at Denmark would hinder the progress, the organizational structure also needs to be re-structured.
For this purpose, the management roles in Denmark will be clearly defined, while processes will be standardized and documented. Further distribution centers will be established in UAE and USA to tap international sales potential, while German distribution facility will be relocated nearer to volume production facility in Tatabanya, Hungary. Local sourcing will be emphasized to reduce costs of raw materials and maintenance of machinery. Transfer of knowledge will also be standardized by translating machinery manuals into English to be able to translate back to any language later, with ease and convenience.
All this will be implemented within the period of 12 months. Lessons learned from setting up Hungarian plant, will be used as reference for most of the off-shoring project to China.
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