Improving the productivity of a small industry in rural Korea

This rurally located labor-intensive industry employs 50 persons in the production of 120,000 bamboo fishing poles per year. Identified problems include large raw material inventories, dependence on a few customers, peaks and valleys in business volume, bottlenecks in the production process, lack of product diversification, and lack of strong financial resources. Production bottlenecks include inefficient space utilization, back flow of materials and people in the plant, excessive paint drying times and goods in process storage, inordinate employee time consumed in hand matching bamboo sections. Recommendations for improvement are made in the areas of marketing, facilities, and production. Marketing recommendations focused on pole standardization, diversification of products, development of promotional literature, new customer development, and utilization of available technical assistance. In the facilities area, a new layout and a revised work flow were designed to reduce materials handling. In the production process, changes were recommended in the selection of bamboo sections, sizing by gauging, and in the reaming, boring, winding, plugging and painting operations.