Abstracts from the Proceedings of the 3rd ESST Conference Warsaw 2013

摘要

The Chinese Beet Sugar Industry has undergone significant reforms since the turn of the 21st century, a move which prompted the expansion of ABSugar's footprint from the south of China into the North. Socio-economic and political challenges notwithstanding, the technological challenges that the factories face are considerable, with low processing capacity and having to cope with extreme environmental conditions. Change management in the business has been through much iteration in recent years. The business currently embraces a bottom-up approach to innovation whilst retaining decisions on capital spending at a central level, a process that has seen a rapid increase in the uptake of new technology and ideas. With the global sugar industry entering a period of significant change, there is certainly the potential to leverage lessons from ABSugar's last 6 years in China to improve the position of some smaller, less efficient industries in the world. This paper aims to present a roadmap of the process that the North China business has been through in order to reach this point. Specific examples will be used to highlight the successes and pitfalls along the journey, and hopefully provide some lessons on how to effectively manage change and successfully embed new technologies into a long established industry.