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The Future of Manufacturing and Mining Industry

Apr 18-2013   



Kevin Thieneman,the Chairman and President of Caterpillar China, India and ASEAN,give a speech named The Future of Manufacturing and Mining Industry to students of BiMBA on Oct. 14th 2011.

Before the speech, Professor Dayuan Hu, Dean of BiMBA, gave a warm welcome and an introduction to the speaker.

Mr. Kevin first gave an introduction to Caterpillar, which has 17 factories in China, and 7 facilities are under construction, and there are a lot of constructive activities going on of Caterpillar in China. Since the establishment of the first factory in 1993, Caterpillar is doing their best to keep up with the growth of economics. Now, the overall value added the factory is much higher than that at the beginning. 

Then Mr. Kevin discussed the challenge of moving manufacturing from east to center to west, and the challenge to move the value chain. He thought that, for China, it is a great challenge to encourage many big companies to move from east coast to the west because of the poor infrastructure there, which needs more investment in freight to move the material. Chinese government has invested a lot to Chinese companies and international companies, but what is important is that the researchers have to develop something new to meet customers’ needs, which is a challenge for manufacture. To better develop the manufacture, Europe and the US become partnership between private companies and government, that is, a joint obligation between them. In Asia, there are four challenges in high manufacture. The first job for most manufactures is to have production system, and the second job is to set out a common process for continuing a program. Mr. Kevin explained that is production system, and said there are four things that production system targets: people, quality, velocity and cost

After talking about the factors impacting our world today, Kevin listed the solutions:

1. Supply chain: Kevin takes the concept of Caterpillar as example. In his company, collaboration of suppliers is their top A. For any company, if they could develop partnership with their suppliers, they will result long time healthy relationship, so suppliers as true partners. 

2. Skill training: to make sure everyone in the factory is engaged is the foundation for companies.

3. Regulatory in coherence: Kevin thinks variety is the hardest environment for regulation, and complexity is death for many factories. The company should make sure the regulation is limited to the purpose that it needs to. Kevin suggests the company don’t impose more regulation on manufactures that they need to.

Kevin talked about the development of mining industry from safety, productivity and policy aspects.

Safety: the biggest challenge in Asia is safety. In China, per million tons of mine, the mortality rate is 50 times higher than US. One of the reasons is the ignorance of safety issue.

Productivity: under the 12th five-year plan, Caterpillar gets a lot of productivity on the existing mine. More mines can be opened on the center and west of China, which creates opportunity to do things differently. The similar situation happens in the country of India. 

Policy: Kevin made a policy survey to the countries of Indonesia, Philippines, India, etc. and attaches the importance of policy on the development of mining industry. India government focuses one updating their law to better develop mining. Indonesia government encourages mining in their country, so very effective mining is going on and it also attracts big investment. 

In the Q & A section, Kevin answered every question from the audiences present. 

At last, John Yang, International Dean of BiBMA, made comments on Kevin’s presentation, and was awarding BiMBA International Advisory Board (CIAB) Membership Certificate to Kevin.

The Future of Manufacturing and Mining Industry

Apr 18-2013   



Kevin Thieneman,the Chairman and President of Caterpillar China, India and ASEAN,give a speech named The Future of Manufacturing and Mining Industry to students of BiMBA on Oct. 14th 2011.

Before the speech, Professor Dayuan Hu, Dean of BiMBA, gave a warm welcome and an introduction to the speaker.

Mr. Kevin first gave an introduction to Caterpillar, which has 17 factories in China, and 7 facilities are under construction, and there are a lot of constructive activities going on of Caterpillar in China. Since the establishment of the first factory in 1993, Caterpillar is doing their best to keep up with the growth of economics. Now, the overall value added the factory is much higher than that at the beginning. 

Then Mr. Kevin discussed the challenge of moving manufacturing from east to center to west, and the challenge to move the value chain. He thought that, for China, it is a great challenge to encourage many big companies to move from east coast to the west because of the poor infrastructure there, which needs more investment in freight to move the material. Chinese government has invested a lot to Chinese companies and international companies, but what is important is that the researchers have to develop something new to meet customers’ needs, which is a challenge for manufacture. To better develop the manufacture, Europe and the US become partnership between private companies and government, that is, a joint obligation between them. In Asia, there are four challenges in high manufacture. The first job for most manufactures is to have production system, and the second job is to set out a common process for continuing a program. Mr. Kevin explained that is production system, and said there are four things that production system targets: people, quality, velocity and cost

After talking about the factors impacting our world today, Kevin listed the solutions:

1. Supply chain: Kevin takes the concept of Caterpillar as example. In his company, collaboration of suppliers is their top A. For any company, if they could develop partnership with their suppliers, they will result long time healthy relationship, so suppliers as true partners. 

2. Skill training: to make sure everyone in the factory is engaged is the foundation for companies.

3. Regulatory in coherence: Kevin thinks variety is the hardest environment for regulation, and complexity is death for many factories. The company should make sure the regulation is limited to the purpose that it needs to. Kevin suggests the company don’t impose more regulation on manufactures that they need to.

Kevin talked about the development of mining industry from safety, productivity and policy aspects.

Safety: the biggest challenge in Asia is safety. In China, per million tons of mine, the mortality rate is 50 times higher than US. One of the reasons is the ignorance of safety issue.

Productivity: under the 12th five-year plan, Caterpillar gets a lot of productivity on the existing mine. More mines can be opened on the center and west of China, which creates opportunity to do things differently. The similar situation happens in the country of India. 

Policy: Kevin made a policy survey to the countries of Indonesia, Philippines, India, etc. and attaches the importance of policy on the development of mining industry. India government focuses one updating their law to better develop mining. Indonesia government encourages mining in their country, so very effective mining is going on and it also attracts big investment. 

In the Q & A section, Kevin answered every question from the audiences present. 

At last, John Yang, International Dean of BiBMA, made comments on Kevin’s presentation, and was awarding BiMBA International Advisory Board (CIAB) Membership Certificate to Kevin.