Konya Model Factory, one of Turkey’s 8 Model Factories established by UNDP, Government and private sector partnership, stands as a major pillar in the region to support the SMEs to increase their productivity and enhance employment opportunities in the manufacturing sector.

The Konya Model Factory Inauguration Ceremony, held on 8 October with the attendance of Minister of Industry and Technology Mustafa Varank, has once more showcased the benefits of Model Factories to the manufacturing industry by boosting productivity of SMEs and creating new employment opportunities. Established in 2020 under a public-private sector partnership and funded by the KfW Development Bank, the Model Factory has been supporting enterprises to increase their operational productivity and competitiveness by preparing them for Industry 4.0 with the theoretical and applied experiential trainings in line with their improvement needs and priorities.

Upon analysis of the needs of the region and the sector, Konya Model Factory offers various programmes for businesses to improve their production capacity, enhance employee competencies, and extend their vision to a lean transformation. To raise awareness on lean production techniques, the Factory provides introductory training programmes for companies and institutions. The companies who would like to benefit from training and consultancy services on tens of production topics gathered under different modules of an integrated curriculum, take the Tailor-Made Consultancy and Training Services.

One of the major services of Model Factories with the highest impact is the Learn and Transform Programme. The 4 to 6 months long training and consultancy service starts with the Factory’s visit to the companies, followed by a study to determine the waste spots of their manufacturing lines. The experts then prepare specific trainings and consultancy packages for those companies. The Model Factory also offers awareness raising seminars for broad or more specialized audience. Through these seminars and various other programmes it is also ensured to enhance university-industry cooperation.

The Model Factory already provided the Learn and Transform Programme for 21 companies, whereas 20 more have shown interest for the upcoming term inspiring from the others’ success stories. The attending companies indicate that they observe their internal capacities are strengthened with a minimum of at least two personnel as their competencies are increased. While increasing their production per capita on average 54 percent in their pilot region, the companies also observed a reduction of up to 70 percent in lot change times, and savings of up to 40 percent were achieved in the production areas.

Complimentary to these activities, Konya Model Factory aims for enhanced employment in the industry in both short and long term. By supporting the lean transformation of enterprises, local capacities are expected to grow and thus the sector absorbs more labor force. While this transformation can only be expected in the medium and long term, different intervention modalities have been determined to create new jobs in the short run, in order to complement the transformation in the manufacturing industry.

To increase the employment of Syrians under temporary protection (SuTP) and host communities, the Konya Chamber of Industry Vocational Training Center’s (KTO-MEM) ateliers are supported and financed by the KfW Development Bank in terms of the machinery and equipment used for several tailor-made vocational trainings in different fields. For better implementation at local level, project stakeholders and chambers in Konya are involved in the employment processes. With their continued efforts, more than 30 vocational courses, various number of trainings and seminars have been completed, and 255 Syrians and 358 individuals from the host communities have been employed.

Entrepreneurship activities are also supported at Konya Model Factory in close cooperation with InnoPark Konya Technology Development Region. Within the scope of this component, basic and intensive entrepreneurship trainings and pre-incubation and incubation programmes were carried out to support the entrepreneur candidates and in-kind grants were provided to support them establish their start-ups.

Services of Konya Model Factory continue to support the businesses in the region with an increasing interest.

Once the digital transformation of the Factory is completed, the applied trainings are expected to be even more effective, as they will be given at a real factory setting equipped with the latest digital tools.

To learn more about the services of Konya Model Factory, please visit https://modelfabrika.com.tr/