Innovation at Winvention

To better tell the story, Jack dove into our five key priorities at the factory:  

1. Safety
2. Quality
3. Delivery
4. Cost
5. People 

Q: Looking at the dedication around Safety at Winvention, Jack shared a little more about the recent success our team achieved to ensure a reduction in injuries.

A: Safety is a foundation to best-in-class quality and productivity and is not only a top priority but a core value for Kids2. 

Our team at Winvention is building a risk management mechanism as we believe active prevention and strong safety awareness & alertness is key to promote safety management. Our recent safety measures and effects include:

• Daily safety inspection mechanism built in March with 290 risk findings that have since experienced corrective actions completed 100% on time.
• “Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) suggestions mechanism” built in April and received 43 valuable suggestions from team members who are encouraged to propose continuous improvement suggestions by being rewarded with in-kind incentives.
• “Safety topic card” launched seven topics and shared three EHS lessons learned within the industry since April.
• “Fresh eyes audit” is a weekly safety inspection established in July with 114 findings in total up to now.
• Safety Emergency Response Plan has been completed and granted certification by the local safety administration bureau.
• Recently adding safer charging stations for team members to charge their electric scooters and providing new helmets to all employees who ride scooters to work.
• We have also implemented a Safety Operation Management Agreement (SOMA) to our vendors aiming to promote their safety awareness when working with the Winvention factory.

Q: With Winvention’s second priority on Quality, talk 2 me about Jason Liu’s focus on ensuring only good quality comes in and out of our factory.

A: Quality comes first and that’s how Jason Liu carries out quality management work within the factory, including several of his best practices worth to mention:

• New hires are provided with quality orientations covering basic knowledge and our quality control requirement on their first day to build a strong quality sense before they start their work.

• In New Production Introduction (NPI) stage, Jason’s Quality Engineer team works out a robust Quality Control Plan (QCP) to control the quality in all processes, like raw material quality control, in-process quality control, and finished products out-going quality control, etc., to make sure all products have their very own QCP followed during the manufacturing process.
• To ensure all products are shipped out as quality product, Winvention Quality Engineers would conduct a pre-shipment inspection by PO number. The shipment will be released only if pre-shipment inspection has passed.
• The quality teams are working on projects to build quality into the process to create less dependency on visual inspection.
• Every year, all products will be put through Kids2’s program test at a 3^rd party lab to make sure our products comply with the quality requirement in different markets.

Q: What new strategies have you found most successful as the industry experiences container shortages while ensuring our priority focus on Delivery service?

A: The key strategy is to ensure the Purchase Orders and high priority items are satisfied. We work closely with the inventory team to make sure we keep prior Purchase Orders under control and work with our Global Transportation & Logistics and Supply Chain teams to make flexible adjustments with container size aiming to ship out as many products as we can. From our forwarder end, we push them to choose more carriers to meet our demand and chase them to release vessel space to us every day. We believe being optimistic and facing the fact upfront will help us pass through the down time. If winter comes, spring can’t be far behind?

Q: What new innovative techniques have you rolled out to help with the Cost priority focus along the assembly lines?

A: Our previous setting for injection machines was to have one person watching one machine. If it was heavy machine, sometimes it requires two employees, which we believe is an overuse of manpower. Therefore, we installed the conveyor belt which allows one team member to monitor two machines, resulting in a 60% productivity improvement within the injection workshop allowing us to free up employees to be deployed elsewhere throughout Winvention. 

At the assembly line, we have introduced our first auto-screwing machine for our activity walker and plan to apply another 16 of these machines to other assembly lines by the end of 2021.

We are also introducing a burning oven in the coating process. This new technology not only saves $100,000 per year but can eliminate 95% concentration acid usage which good for both safety and environment. 

Q: Winvention has also been experiencing EPA wins this year – tell us more about the new programs established – which also help our priority focus on People.

A: To create a good working environment in the extreme summer heat and winter cold seasons, we installed a new HVAC system in four workshops, which is also very welcomed by our local team! Hoses were added to bring the cool air down in summer and heat down in winter to better facilitate the air flow throughout the 250,000 sq ft factory with 30 ft ceilings.

In addition, to fully meet the local government’s requirement on environment protection, we rolled out seven projects that will also provide a good working environment for our people.  

1.Emergency wastewater pool 1200m³

2.Welding area ventilation

3.Printing machine ventilation

4.Powder coating line ventilation

5.Hazard WH drainage

6.Powder coating pre-treatment line isolation

7.Powder coating pre-treatment line ventilation

Q: Tell us more about the tiny wins created by the people on your team helping achieve the important work shared today:

• David Dai, IT Manager, has been our acting sourcing manager since February, working with the Sourcing team to achieve 3% total material cost reduction.
• Bruce Ye, Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) Manager, is the acting facility manager since April leading the installation of HVAC system and completed the seven EPA projects.
• Herry Wong, Program Management Office in China, collaborates with our Winvention steering committee meetings to drive big project execution and is now leading the facility inspection and remediation.
• Winvention is working on our product migration plan for 2022 and has had full support from our team functions, including the Supply/Inventory Planning team with Harry Law, Procurement team with Vincent Jin, and Manufacturing Engineering team with CF Chan.

Q: Looking to the future and our innovation opportunities, what are you most excited about Winvention and how do you see the factory helping Kids2 overall be the best? 

A: Winvention is a young team and just starting its operation last year. We may still be behind compared with other vendors who have more than 20 years operation experience but being new means we can learn and use new ways and new methodologies to manage our operations. We can utilize automation with more lean process. Now that our management team has been setup, all team members are proactive and passionate. And while our local supply chain base has been stabilized, I believe Winvention 2022 will have good performance in term of safety, quality, service, cost, and people, and this will build a solid foundation for Winvention’s further development and help Kids2 be the best.