Symbios Knowledge Sharing

1– Lean Manufacturing at Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University

“Made in Egypt” is great, but “Make it happens in Egypt” is even greater. An inspirational session about the Lean Manufacturing’s Future and Career in Egypt had been delivered by the most talented and experienced in this field, Eng. Hossam Sabbour, the representative of Symbios    Consulting group, at Faculty of Engineering |Alexandria University. Eng. Hossam Sabbour started his session by giving a clear introduction about the lean Manufacturing field in Egypt and its relationship with the field of           Engineering. The attendees found the session very informative, beneficial and interesting. Furthermore, they were intrigued to ask for more sessions or course in same field to cover more details and interested in finding how to start their career in this field.

2– Lean Manufacturing Career Path by Eng. Shereen Mossallam at ASME - GUC

On Friday 13th of April, Shereen Mosallam gave a speech at ASME GUC in which she talked about “Lean Manufacturing”. In her speech, Eng. Mosallam defined the “Lean Manufacturing” and why it’s important for companies and how it’s different from other methodologies that could be used. She also focused on how the lean     mindset is usually different than traditional mindsets, the way it sees and judges the problems, the Lean’s main    objective is to increase the profits and satisfy the customers by reducing the Variation and eliminating “MUDA” which is the Japanese word of “waste”.

At the end of her speech, Eng. Shereen gave them valuable   lessons that she learned over years of work and experience; always start with the customers satisfaction in mind, infinity loop of improvement, always remember that the customer wants it All.

Egypt Opex Chapter Meeting | When Human Comes First!

Egypt Opex Chapter is a nonprofit chapter affiliated to Global OPEX Society, aiming to: building up capabilities of its members; through networking, knowledge sharing and awareness transfer through adoption of a number of activities that would result in adding value to their business organizations, and serve local Egyptian market needs including knowledge transfers to technical syndicates, academic institutions and interested members.  Following the successful launch of OPEX Egypt Chapter Conference in October 2016 in Cairo, the group Founders decided to meet on a regular basis and set the roadmap for Egypt OPEX Chapter, thus meeting took place on second Saturday of each month  and were attended by groups of experienced OPEX advocates, volunteering to promote best practices in all disciples of operations, engineering, human resources etc.  In 2018, we created two years and half of Success stories. Now, we had reached many of success numbers as the following;

“We are dedicated to people- whether the seasoned practitioner or the newly”

Cost reduction in recession periods lecture

On behalf of Symbios Consulting Dubai Office, Eng. Shereen Mossallam, Symbios Consulting Manager, delivered a lecture on "Cost Reduction Strategies in Recession Periods". The lecture was attended by more than 30 participants from different industries as construction, manufacturing of building materials, aluminum, water, FMCG,  services and distributing companies, suppliers of government hospitals, and governmental agencies.

The participants learnt 15 different cost reduction strategies in operations through lectures, visuals, group work and discussions on methods  of reduction and  ways of improvement that would be suitable to apply in their companies.

Symbios Consulting hold s its 7^th Certification Celebration Event!

Earning a certificate or a degree, or both, opens the door to countless higher career opportunities. Symbios team celebrated the certification for about 50 of its training courses participants. The event was held at Maadi, celebrating successful participants of   lean green belt, lean six sigma green belt and supply chain workshops and other courses. Symbios is committed to excellence and thus generates strategies to strengthen competencies, develops new business models considering the rapid technology advancements while creating a realistic road-map for capabilities building for teams and individuals.  

Earning a certificate or a degree, or both, opens the door to countless higher career opportunities. Symbios team celebrated the certification for about 50 of its training courses participants. The event was held at Maadi, celebrating successful participants of   lean green belt, lean six sigma green belt and supply chain workshops and other courses. Symbios is committed to excellence and thus generates strategies to strengthen competencies, develops new business models considering the rapid technology advancements while creating a realistic road-map for capabilities building for teams and individuals.  

Symbios Consulting sets KPls objectives for Aman for E payment – Raya  Group

Symbios Consulting collaborated with Aman (a subsidiary of Raya Holding Raya's companies) on  a project of setting up the KPls and objectives for all departments across multiple levels. Aman chose its focus areas to be WE, WOW, SPEED, and GROWTH. Each objective is designed to serve certain perspective in which “WOW” will work on how they want to impress their customers, “SPEED” how fast they will be, “Growth”” how big they want to grow. Symbios Consulting group started this project for 4 months with Raya Lead Ms. Amira Ibrashy; Head of Development along with Aman’s HR team led by Dina Abo Zahra and the support of Aman’s CEO Mr. Hazem Moghazi. During the period of the project; the management team was engaged in many activities, workshops and sessions held by Maged Galal, Niveen Demerdash and Shereen Mosallam, of which more than 2 workout sessions tackled the best KPls  meeting the business needs and targets have been set accordingly.

  Aman is a subsidiary of Raya Holding, Aman for e-payments was established in 2016 with a vision to create an ultimate cashless society in Egypt, enabling financial inclusion for Egyptians citizens through available secure and convenient E-payment solution; within the recent economic and financial decisions undertaken by the Egyptian government and the Central bank of Egypt in support of financial inclusion.

From Symbios to the whole world again!

On 10th of March, 2018 Symbios Consulting team organized the first Digital Supply Chain Conference in MENA in order to bridge the gap among the top companies and highlight the importance of digital supply chain in the future industries. Throughout taking the participants through the supply chain maturity path from "End to End Supply Chain" up to "Digitally Transformed Supply Chains". The actual worldwide digital supply chain revolution has changed the game. Digital Supply Chain helps companies redesign their supply chain cycle and succeed in controlling their overall cost. Digital Supply Chain has, in fact, helped many companies reduce their procurement and supply chain costs and increase their revenue. The conference was attended by 150 participants from 6 countries. Participants were representing their international corporations, which included: P&G, Unilever, ABB, KAPCI, IBM, GE Digital, LEONI, Schneider Electric, Ifineon, Ideal Standards, and Electrolux. 

Mr.Hans Eham ,from Germany and Mr. Rafik Fouad were representing Infineon Technologies AG. In their speech; they talked about the challenges and solutions in Supply Chain Management. Mr.Mohamed Hegazi ,from Coca-Cola talked about the Logistics Infrastructure Planning. Mr. Hatem ElMohandes, from GE Digital gave   Insights into Digital Transformation. Mr. Sameer Sortur, from India representing Square Circle Tech company talked about the importance of Enabling Industry 4.0 and Digital Organization in Supply Chains Using Block-chain. Mr. Ibrahim Seyam, from Schneider Electric had an effective speech about the Digital Sourcing & Reverse Auction. Mr. Hazem Shahin, from Servier explained the Track and Trace in the Pharmaceutical Industry through a case study about the Block Chain.

Digital Supply Chain Workshop

The conference interesting workshops received more than 80  participant from19 companies. Top industry players showcased the latest trends of the digital supply chain examples and solutions. The workshops offered live demo experiences of a wide range of digital supply chain applications and a case study.

The conference started with a welcoming speech by Shereen Mosallam from Symbios Consulting Group. She explained the roadmap and maturity path from End to End Supply Chain to Digital Supply Chain.

Symbios connects the four Continents!

A new chapter has begun, Symbios Group is a global consulting and engineering firm. Founded in 1999 in the United Kingdom, Symbios today connects the four continents Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America through its four international offices in the United States, UAE, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Additionally, Symbios brings a long history of successful partnerships with several operational excellence-standard firms in Europe, the United States, Japan, South Africa, and the Middle East.

Mission

Making a difference while bridging the world knowledge and experience on project at a time.

Vision

To maintain a sustainable growth for our partners through consultancy, automation, and digitalization while not compromising people and planet.

Symbios Solutions represents Symbios Consulting’s recent expansion into North America. Shereen Mosallam - director of Symbios Consulting’s operations in the Arab Gulf, the Middle East and North Africa - and Bassem Hussein spearheaded this newest venture in late 2017.  In January 2018, they established Symbios Solution’s headquarters in the heart of a growing innovation hub in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Today, Symbios Solutions’ focus is on unifying Six Sigma, Lean & Optimization with Industry 4.0 and Digitalization. Technology is getting smarter exponentially. Smart technology is becoming increasingly obsolete. “Intelligent” and “Genius Technology” are swiftly replacing their predecessors. This is where Symbios Solutions can help.

2017 Year of Recognition, Technology & Successful Social Performance

 Time to say Goodbye to 2017 and Welcome 2018.
For Symbios; 2017 has been a challenging year yet very exciting. It was the year of Technology with the aim in mind is
to ensure " Happy Customer Journey". As an advocate of embracing technology, we've implemented LMS to make our trainees
learning experience paperless, more accessible and faster.
Our new website implemented in Q2 reflects our beliefs and role in promoting Lean culture among our
OPEX Egypt Chapter and Clients.
Our cooperation with international association of 20keys and OPEX enabled us to host 2 successful conferences in Q1 & Q3.

Our hard work have resulted of significant savings to our clients Dabur Egypt, Kapci, Egypt Foods, and Bariq among many successful cooperation.
Our program in Unionaire was highly recognized by HE Minister of Industry; Eng. Tarek Qabil and our partner in success founder
and owner of Unionaire; Eng. Mohamed Fathy.
We've ended the year by putting the early signed protocol with the Egyptian Engineering Syndicate into action and delivered a complimentary
Lean Awareness Session to over 200 of freshly and experienced engineer.

We would like to thank all our partners, clients and supporting associations for a successful year in 2017 and we look forward to continue our journey with you in 2018.

Wishing you All a Happy New Year 2018

It was somewhere in 2012, the local Saudi business group Alliance Holding which runs General Lighting Company went for business partnership with American multinational Carlyle group. We can say this is the start point of thinking about “Lean” for the success in the organisation. Some lean experts from Carlyle group made few visits to think about lean manufacturing with the top management of JV of General Lighting Company and Carlyle. In this period, the management started to look to hire a consultant to implement the lean tools. Various lean consultants were considered but finally decided to go with Symbios because of two reasons:
1) Their presence in the Middle East region from long time and know the culture of the local as well as expat people working in this region.
2) Their customer base mostly with manufacturing industries

Philips is one of the companies known for their endeavors to shape the future by being inovative and constant improvement of its business environement, tools and products.

The journey started in 2013, mainly focusing on Loss Analysis and implementing 5 S. Training was conducted throughout the last three years on Lean Green Belt, Statistical Process Control & Lean Supervision.
Challenges that the General Lighting Company and now Philips Lighting has faced and the main areas for improvements:
The company is in lighting business for more than 35 years and the main focus for the company is to fulfill the customer orders as much as possible, while providing a wide variety of choices as its main strength but all this was done by maintaining huge raw materials, finished goods inventory and producing the goods in batches.
Little focus was given to how it was produced, distance and time taken in the process and how many days it lies in the shop floor as “work in process” and as finished goods in the warehouse. The company hired 6 rented warehouses in different locations around the factory to fulfill the demand!
So the areas for the improvement was clear – reduce the production time, inventory and increase the customer satisfaction level!

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Lean was obvious the way to identify saving opportunities in time, inventory and resources.

Lean increases capability of workers through extensive training that targets key personnel, supervisors and cascaded down to all workers.

Areas of achievements and satisfaction level of meeting the objectives set:
In the last 4 years of lean journey there is a big improvement in many areas;
 Lean culture has started with trainings on usage many tools; 5S is the one of the important tool which helped us to gain more floor space through Red Tag activity.

 Implemented Kanban in the shop floor and at finished goods. The shop floor planning in some areas is through Heijunka board which is helping the supervisors what exactly to produce! All these tools helped us to reduce the inventory.

Changing from batch production to one piece flow by forming the small manufacturing cell helped into building the team culture, line balancing and equal work distribution, SMED tool reduced the set up time. Over all we gained more than 25% of floor space in all three factories!
 Through Kaizen events, people participation in giving the Kaizens increased, through Gemba walk in factory and warehouse with line managers and engineers increased more awareness for the employees on Safety, quality and process improvements. TPM system brought many unresolved maintenance issues into closed, started to use daily performance meeting and started measuring the performance through KPI. Started to use the tools like A3, 5Why for major issues.

 After JV was made with Philips Lighting in 2014, the company started to recognize the real benefit of implementing the lean as this culture is already in place for many years with Philips lighting. Since the JV has to move with the same phase of lean with other Philips companies worldwide, there are few big tasks; challenges are to be fulfilled by joining hands with Symbios Consulting.

Areas where Symbios exceeded expectation:
In building the new layout and re-layout, lean concepts were widely and wisely used. Through green belt training program, many engineers/supervisors are involved in improvements through Lean projects. Taught us on how to use Hoshin planning system so that the management team and their team members started thinking for 1 to 3 years goals and objectives.
Few examples showing how Philips has moved forward:-

Trainees setting their departmental objectives, setting their KPIS and personal duties and responsibilities increases their commitment to making it a success.

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