Learning how to manage the project instead of learning electronics
Initially the aim of the project was to assemble electronic training equipment, in a cost effective way for the european market, in Mocambique where the salaries are low, and throw this activity contribute to a learning by doing process in the area electronics and electricity in the host country. The activities were planned to take place at vocational training centers as a kind
of laboative training. A continuous support from Swedish staff in Mocambique to organize and implement these activities was also planned.
After some tentatives to start the project in Maputo, it was successfully started in Beira. Theearlier developed instructions for assembling equipment functioned and the first shipment of material was assembled in the end of last year. The assemblers were enthusiastic and asked for more material. Now, half a year later, they have not yet got more material, since the shipment was delayed 9 months in Sweden, from august 2008 to april 2009 and the payment of the customs fee has not been done up to now, 3 months after the arrival of another shipment.
This indicates that the problems are not technical, but of more administrative and logistic nature. There is also a need to search for the best way of doing business together in a more general aspect. The demand of the equipment we started to assemble is limited and decreasing. It is not even such a work intensive process to assemble this equipment that it, with high customs fees, is a good business to do it in Mocambique for the European market.
From the beginning tax reduction was counted upon, but it has not yet been realized. It needs a closer bilateral cooperation around price setting and addressing of the goods to suit the norms of the customs. Anyhow, there are other equipment, that could be more profitable to assemble and there are practical and computer based training methods, that could be introduced. The first production have functioned as an administrative battering ram. The companies in this joint venture project have learned to know each others and are ready to a deeper cooperation. The field of possibilities is also partially investigated.
A two weeks visit in Mocambique with discussions
Direction staff from the two cooperating companies MicroSupport from Sweden and Grupo Chicomo in Mocambique met some days in april/may and the Swedish direction visited the production places. The focus of cooperation has moved towards a more exclusive cooperation between MicroSupport and Grupo Chicomo, who has been given all the responsibilities for the management in Mocambique. One advantage is that english can be used as a common language.
A consequense is that on this level, the project focus more on management and search of business opportunities of a both-winner-concept, than on pedagogic development and involvement in staff training and knowledge transfer as such in the area och electronics and electricity. The pedagogics will instead focus on to create a good business-to business communication.
When visiting the Industrial Institutes in Maputo, Matola and Beira, they were all offered to continue/start cooperation with the Project Elstudenter and an idea is, according to the task list, to divide the assembling work of the 50 unmounted units, now waiting at the customs in Maputo, between the three Institutes and maybe specialize the cooperation to different areas in the future.
This strategy will give the best feed back to the production instructions and the most wide spread contact net for future marketing and business cooperation.
Business to business communication
One advantage of the focus on business to business communication between the Directions of MicroSupport and Grupo Chicomo is that the project leaders can talk directly to each others in English. The organization of and communication with assembling staff is a business only for the Mocambikan company who is the owner of the production. The only way for MicroSupport to communicate with technical staff is through the instructions included with the material and tools for assembling. Of course cooperation can be arranged on any level, but on the Mocambikan partners demand. To the instruction material can also be included distance or hands-on support of course. In this way the responsibilities are more clarified.
Organizing the project towards events and milestones
A tentative to brake down project activities into events and milestones exists. This more target oriented model for project administration suits more, when there are no project manager present where the assembling take place. It is still a question if it will be a natural way to communicate, focusing more on milestones than on the complicated process, but let us see.
The temporary and very limited presence of the project owner MicroSupport, during the phase of establishment of the production, has probably delayed the production, but not necessary the quality of the cooperation between the partner companies or the process of learning cooperative management.
If the main purpose was, as described in the project plan, to start up fabrication, it could have been done more smooth and fast without beeing more expensive, but if this activity is seen more as a start point for future cooperation, a kind of expansion survey, the very limited influence from Swedish staff in Mocambique could be an advantage and gain local empowerment, if something good will come out from the project.
Steerageway gives motivation which gives result
Project management is like reading, biking and work in general. If you do it too slowly, your mental sense of balance loose the apprehension of context and orientation. We need steerageway, a minimum rate of motion, to maneuver a project as well as a vessel towards desired goals. It is the same with a match. You have to strike it fast enoungh and with sufficient friction to get fire. And to keep the fire burning you need to blow and support with fire wood.
If an initiative comes to the right environment and in the right time and is just what is needed in that moment, a small effort could give a big result, like a puff of air. But still, if you don't take care of the fire continuously, support it with new material and air, there is a tendency that it dies down. You need to sit by and attend to a fire. You need to be there all the time and not just now and then, if you want to have the full control of the situation.
The fire in human bodies is the motivation and the personal visions. To get the feeling of progress, it is needed to maneuver with a certain speed and to experience a continous result. Seen from the horizon of the assembling staff, it is necessary to act faster to keep the motivation. If not, there is a risk that the project will bee seen as one of all these development projects which passed by and just left some dying whirls in the water.
This project has all possibilities to succeed, lead to a stable business and give pay off with enough steerageway. We need to improve upon that, without blaming anyone, just looking for ways to run the project and the future business faster and have that in mind all the time.
"Time is not waiting".
Pedagogic material
Maybe the production of pedagogic instruction video programs will be the only product in the future bilateral cooperation.
Towards film clips embedded in Flash instructions
Some ideas about how to develop new instructions in the future have come up, including the use of short film clips like this one
or this one. It makes model learning easy. Small film clips can be organized to an advanced instruction for example how to assemble electronic training equipment. It is also possible to mix text, pictures and film clips, just like the material you are reading now.
It is possible to put video into a PowerPoint program but it is not possible to convert the PowerPoint file to Flash with Articulate presenter and keep the film clip. Anyhow, there are ways to go around this problem.
Since it happens in some cases that there can be problems to open the Flash files automatically, a question is if it would be better to choose another format. -But then the possibility to use quiss is lost.
Using the best and cheapest play back equipment.
Mini-PC:s and Linux system is O.K. Keyboard labels for 15 USD are available if the keyboard is of a foreign type. Even media players. Using DVD:s without any need to have Internet connection could be a good choice, epecially where there is no permanent access to Internet.
Cheap, smart and simple ways to optimize playback equipment for viewing digital instructions, like this mouse for flexible film navigation, foot and knee controls for free hands during assembling and head sets for spoken information to leave the eyes free to concentrate on the work has also been proposed.
Joy sticks are used as video game controllers, but could also be adapted to control and communicate with training programs in an easy way. The input device is important for a learner as well as for a pilot.
E-learning going simple
E-learning means nowadays any learning via computer. Earlier it was often associated to complicated simulations but today, a simple Youtube-video about for example how you change strings on your guitar is also regarded as e-learning. The tendency is to make e-learning more simple, fast and cheap. A well prepared film clip could be easier to understand, even than an instructor.
Discussions about the use of a learning platform for production instruction has taken place. A proposal has been done, to develop a functional example. Running e-learning on a platform gives the possibility to control individual students and their progress. It might be more useful for theoretical studies and information than for instructions how to do things, but it is possible to use any pedagogic material on a platform. The platform is like a virtual classroom with a teacher.
Text books still going strong
Traditional instruction books can be very useful and could be more easy to follow if photos, serial techniques and maybe also story telling are used to illustrate a process more like in cartoons.
We have tried to follow paper based instructions when assembling the Basic Unit 2000 and it has worked well with people with a relatively high education, used to read text books and follow instructions, but the less basic knowledge a reader has, the more detailed and clear instructions are necesarry and maybe sometimes it is not sufficient with still pictures and text or speach.
The combination between text books and video clips
Some situations are hard to describe clear with words and still pictures only. A combination between an instruction book and movie clips could be a solution when text and pictures are not enough. A text book + a DVD that could be viewed in a TV-monitor or computer could be a good basic solution.
In cases when there are not always easy to get access to computers and Internet, it is also good to have two parallell information canals. When both are available they work together like audio canals in stereo sound, but if not, the information is still available "in mono".
A short movie could also give a comprehensive understanding and serve as an introduction to a textbook where the process is analysed and described in detail step by step.
Software development - a knowledge management activity
Maybe it is in this software area the big possibilities to bilateral knowledge and business cooperation are hidden. To develop different production instruction programs together for national and regional use, and to develop methods for use of playback equipment in an ergonomic, pedagogic and rational way. Working together to produce learning material would also contribute to a mutual learning process.
"How to do it yourself instead of to import it expensive."
The concept develops to an IKEA-similar solution for entrepreneurs and small companies. Packages of tools, material an assembling instrucions are offered to small companies and groups of people who are ready to do the assembling work and sell the result on the local market. When possible it could be sufficient to specify tools and material necessary to arrange on the local or international market and a good instruction how to assemble/build the equipment from scratch.
Hours of training
The technical training of assembling staff has been substituted by administraion and management training in the form learning by doing for a bilateral development project like this. The problem has not been how to manage the technical part of the project, but how to act together and to understand each others and how to manage administrative problems together.
The learnig takes part between two business cultures and in the meeting between two different leadership styles, that exists i both of the cultures. It is all about how to make business together and the learning is going on continuously. It is not like that simple with knowledge transfer as something between a better knowing instructor and his student, that maybe some of us thouhgt from the beginning.
The project management has newly got online based. It seems that it is a good way to manage a bilateral project on a business platform. It also gives experience for communication on a learning platform.
The hours for training are, in this way of viewing it, all hours of all persons involved in the project since the training is a complex process and not a one way communication from expert to novise.
Conclusions
It seems that the possible profitability of cooperation, where import of material is necessary, depends on Mocambican customs rules and their applications and nothing else. If the Mocambican counterpart in the future has to pay too high customs fees for material, it won't be much left to pay the local assembling & handling.
We had serious problems with the customs the first time we sent material from Sweden. In the end a brooker had to be contracted, to solve the problems. After that the Mocambican counterpart declared that they had got the experience and know how to manage the customs clearance without high costs and problems in the future. Still, for the second shipment, high costs were claimed. Partially this was an effect of lack of cooperation between the Mocambican and the Swedish company about the formal addressing of the goods and the stated value.
There is a possibility to put the value of material lower than it is, in order to reduce the tax in Mocambique. This, will of course affect the possibility to get insurance compensation for loss of equipment. There is also a possibility to send material for assembling of training equipment directly to a governmental training institution to get tax exemption.
It would be most profitable to assemble light eqipment, whith cheap components that takes a relatively long time to put together, since the differences between salary levels between Sweden and Mocambique is the basis of the whole business. That could be the case with printed circuit cards. It could also be good for the counterpart in Mocambique to import components directly from where they are fabricated and to fabricate some more heavy parts of the units locally. Another way is to successively substitute material training equipment with virtual training applications and video training.
If material will be sent back to Sweden, assembled to units, the total customs fee should be calculated on the difference between the value of the material and the assembled units and it should be rather low, but still there is a considerable cost for return shipping. Up to now, no material has been sent back to Sweden, not by air, nor by vessel.
Some figures from the project book keeping:
All paid hours for the project
All travel costs
Value of equipment transferred to the business partner
Cost of material transport and customs clearance
Meeting between two cultures
A bilateral project is a meeting between two cultures and so was also the celebration of the Mozambican national holiday the 25:th of June. The embassy arranged a celebration in Stockholm. Some of us foreigners who have been living in Mozambique were invited.
It could be written much about the meeting between the modern traditionalism and the traditional modernity and between colonialism, socialism and capitalism. For individuals changes of ideas take place step by step and not in the same time as for the social paradigms. Some people keep their old ideas and a more traditional life style, in the course of their whole lives, in a changing society, while others are more open for new ideas.
Characteristic keywords for the dominant social paradigm (DSP) of Western industrial societies are consumption, education and environment, but the traditional society, wherever it is, has other keywords for DSP. Try to find them in the National Anthems below!
Confrontations and mixture of different ideas can sometimes be a bit confusing, especially for foreigners, but for the open minded person it could be an asset.
In a concentrate the new National Anthem from 2002 compared with the old one, reflects some changes of basic idéas.
The text of the new version (2002- ) in English translation:
In the memory of Africa and the World
Beautiful fatherland of that they had dared to fight
Mozambique, your name is Freedom
The Sun of June forever will shine
Mozambique, our Glorious Land
Rock by rock constructing the new day
Millions of arms in one only force
O Loved fatherland we go to be successful
Joined people from Rovuma to Maputo
It harvests the fruits of the combat for the Peace
The dream grows waving in the flag
It goes cultivating in the certainty of tomorrow
Flowers sprouting of the soil of your sweat
For mounts, the rivers, the sea
We swear for you, O Mozambique
No tyrant in will go them to enslave
The text of the old version (1975-2002) in English translation:
Long live FRELIMO,
Guide of the Mozambican people,
Heroic people who, gun in hand,
Toppled colonialism.
All the People united
From the Rovuma to the Maputo,
Struggle against imperialism
And continue, and shall win.
Long live Mozambique!
Long live our flag, symbol of the Nation!
Long live Mozambique!
For thee your People will fight.
United with the whole world,
Struggling against the bourgeoisie,
Our country will be the tomb
Of capitalism and exploitation.
The Mozambican People,
Workers and peasants,
Engaged in work
Shall always produce wealth.
The Portuguese National Anthem from 1910 - before independence
O Heroes of the sea, noble people,
Valiant and immortal nation,
Arise today oncemore
The splendour of Portugal.
From out of the mists of memory,
O Homeland, feel the voices
Of your great forefathers
That shall lead you on to victory!
Refrain
To arms, to arms
On land and sea!
To arms, to arms
To fight for our Homeland!
Against the guns we march, we march!
No comments:
Post a Comment