Entrepreneurs and investors alike perceive the solar energy market as one that provides unlimited growth opportunities and healthy profit margins. Reality is hitting home six years after government interrupted the market with ineffective subsidies and massive rollouts that failed to achieve any meaningful objective.

Companies wanting to succeed and grow sustainably had to work out a strategy that mitigated against the risks presented by a fragmented emerging industry coupled with ill-conceived government schemes. Yoram Gur-Arie, MD of SunTank, one of South Africa’s oldest and most established solar companies, offered to share with us how continuous improvement of manufacturing systems and processes, assisted in positioning the company at the forefront of the industry.

Yoram explains that as soon as 1994, when the company started as an importer and installer of solar systems, it became clear that in order to offer a suitable and competitive product it had to be designed and manufactured by the company. The process of taking a garage operation and turning it into a modern production facility was a long distance race. The structure of the industry in South Africa and the rest of the world is unique and makes heavy investments in capital equipment a risky matter, “We had to pace the process of introducing robots and other automation very carefully, to make sure we don’t sit with too much spare capacity when the industry is going through a down-cycle” says Gur-Arie.

One of the important principles to recognize is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, cost improvements and quality improvements go hand in hand. A company must always have a pipeline of product improvements and process improvements in order to stay ahead of the game. There are no limits to the number of improvement cycles that even the most simple product should go through. The real secret to sustainable growth is to follow a continuous improvement strategy in a disciplined and persistent manner and never lose focus.

SunTank had recently completed the implementation of a fully automated robotic welding system, designed to weld the entire range of solar tanks with minimal human intervention. “Our state of the art machinery and the people operating it, are a result of thousands of hours of design, trial and error, redesign, training, evaluating and improving. It is a never-ending cycle that only long distance runners should contemplate.” Says Gur-Arie.

According to Gur-Arie, the solar heating industry is undergoing a consolidation, “…We anticipate that the industry will rationalize in the short to medium term and provide customers with more clarity concerning technology, pricing, and other standards and conventions that are currently still in a state of flux”, He says.