Silechannel: Chinese partner

“IWAY is the accelerator for us to become the leader and a dream
place to work in the industry”
“Table top supplier Silechannel is one of the best manufacturers and after-sales service providers
in the silestone table top industry. Since 2017, we work with them to provide table top for IKEA
Hong Kong store. IKEA business only shares around 1% of Silechannel’s overall business, but they
have invested greatly to implement IWAY in the factory.
What motivate Silechannel to implement IWAY when IKEA business only take a very small share?
We interviewed Richard Ma, the Managing Director of Silechannel to understand his thinking
behind.

In the silestone table top industry, most of the factories are in small scale. Silechannel was also a
small workshop 20 years ago. However, it’s always no doubt to us that we shall be the best company
and the best employer in the industry. I visited many factories in Australia and Europe,
learnt the most up to date production technique and management system from those factories. In
recent decade, we’ve been improved tremendously in management level and production competence.
Last year, we have achieved 35% business growth. As we also provide after-sales service to individual
consumer, we set our goal to secure 0 complaint from consumers.
With the fast growing business trend, we must build up production capacity for future business. At
the same time, secure a stable, skillful, healthy and motivated workforce is the key success factor to
drive our company from great to the best.
But how?
I realized IKEA’s IWAY requirements actually point out clearly what we need to do in details and they
have a whole team of experts to support us in the hows, for free! Especially in setting up mature
management system, providing effective protection and support to engage and motivate workers.
We build up water treatment facilities in order to circulate waste water back to the production line.
We managed to recycle 90% of water from the production to control dust emission. As a result, we
reduced 90% of dust emission in the relevant workshop.
To enlarge production capability and control working hours, we invested in machinery to lift up the
automation level. We plan to train our workers to be machine operators, so that they will not worry
about being replaced by machines, and will be able to gain good salary through high competence
instead of heavy overtime working.

Implement IWAY in the factory that produces IKEA products is the first step, moving forward, we
plan to implement IWAY also in our other factories to lift up the management level and production
efficiency & capacity in all of our factories. I have strong faith that in 5 years, Silechannel will
become the leading company in global silestone table top industry, and become the first choice of
people to work with.