CDI Holdings · Case Study Library
Mission-Directed Work Teams® · Struandale, South Africa — Three-Year Transformation
Shatterprufe
Three Years of MDW at Struandale — Safety, Ownership, and the Green-to-Gold Journey
South Africa’s Premier Automotive Safety Glass Manufacturer · Struandale Plant · Three-Year MDW Programme · Multi-Site Rollout
33%
DIFR safety
improvement
improvement
120%
Suggestion rate
increase
increase
30%
Quality improvement
OE PPM
OE PPM
21%
Export on-time
delivery gain
delivery gain
Background
From Cultural Inertia to Stream-Aligned Performance
Shatterprufe is South Africa’s premier manufacturer of toughened automotive safety glass — a precision-critical product where quality failure has direct safety consequences. The Struandale plant introduced MDW to address lagging performance and cultural inertia, with the ambition of creating a world-class, short-run, high-quality manufacturing operation. Over three years, the site evolved from a traditional department-based model into a stream-aligned, team-driven operation. The Struandale transformation subsequently informed the company’s broader MDW rollout across its other sites.
The Challenge
Safety, Silos, and a Culture That Wasn’t Generating Ideas
High accident rates, siloed structures, low employee engagement, and weak operational ownership were the presenting symptoms. Suggestion rates were low — the clearest signal that frontline teams were not invested in the operation’s improvement. Safety first: not as a programme priority, but as the most visible expression of whether a culture genuinely values its people.
The Approach
Safety, Streams, and the System of Daily Accountability
1
MDW Core: Mini-Business Teams and Goal AlignmentFormal training and launch of MDW across all teams, centred on 5S, goal alignment, and team accountability. Mini-Business Teams (MDT1, MDT2) created to drive performance ownership at the operational level. Visual management and transparent feedback loops made performance visible, shared, and acted upon rather than reported upward and ignored.
2
Daily Meetings, Operator Participation, and Audit RoutinesMulti-level daily meetings embedded as the core performance rhythm, with operator participation as a structural requirement. Audit routines ensured that standards were maintained and improvement actions tracked. Staggered break schedules, leadership coaching, and service department alignment provided the operational continuity that multi-shift environments require.
3
Performance Metrics Across QCSPSafety (DIFR), Cost (OEE, waiting time, losses), Morale (attendance, suggestions, headcount), and Quality (First-Pass Acceptance) measured, tracked monthly, and shared openly. Every team knew its numbers, every leader coached against them, and every improvement was celebrated when it moved from red toward green.
4
Learning Shared Across PlantsThe Struandale implementation became a learning platform for the group. Best practices — including RH7 changeover improvements — were documented and shared across plants, creating a genuine knowledge network. Operators led process reviews; teams tracked and celebrated their own “green to gold” achievements.
5
From Departments to Streams — The Structural TransformationThe shift from traditional departmental organisation to stream-based operations was enabled by MDW. Stream alignment meant engineering and production shared accountability for end-to-end performance from raw material to finished product. MDW provided the team structure, the meeting discipline, and the performance visibility that made stream-based operation practical. Without the cultural foundation, the structural reconfiguration would have been a reorganisation chart rather than a genuine change in how work was owned and delivered.
Starting Challenges
High accident rates and poor safety culture — DIFR as the first and most critical performance indicator.
Siloed department structures with limited teamwork, alignment, or cross-functional ownership.
Low employee engagement and minimal idea generation — frontline teams disengaged from improvement.
High waiting times, rework, and inconsistent quality metrics across production lines.
Results — Three-Year Programme
Green to Gold: Performance Across Every Dimension
33%
Safety Improvement
Disabling Injury Frequency Rate (DIFR) improved by 33% — the most important result in any manufacturing transformation and the first metric the programme held itself to.
120%
Suggestion Rate
Employee suggestions increased by 120% — the cultural metric that proves frontline teams moved from disengagement to ownership. You cannot get 120% more suggestions from teams that don’t care.
30%
Quality (OE PPM)
Quality defects measured in OE PPM improved by 30% over three years, with RH9 First-Pass Acceptance consistently maintained above 94%.
21%
Export On-Time
Export on-time delivery improved by 21%, with production volume up 10% — more output, delivered more reliably, at consistently higher quality.
97%+
RH9 Attendance
Attendance at Roller Hearth 9 maintained above 97% with suggestions per person rising to 1.4 in peak periods — team-level ownership made visible in daily behaviour.
Multi-Site
Group Rollout
The Struandale transformation informed Shatterprufe’s broader MDW rollout across multiple sites — proving the model was repeatable, not site-specific.
“
Culture change must be underpinned by visible leadership and system discipline — recognition, clarity of purpose, and aligned values catalyse performance.
Key Lessons · Shatterprufe MDW Programme · Struandale
Key Insight
Shatterprufe demonstrates that MDW delivers across every dimension simultaneously when structural and cultural transformation are pursued together. A 33% DIFR improvement and a 120% suggestion rate increase in the same three-year programme are not coincidences. They are two faces of the same shift: when people feel safe enough to speak up, they feel invested enough to improve.
