A conceptual approach to increase competitiveness in a typical South African manufacturing SME

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Global changes in the manufacturing landscape affect South African manufacturing small– and medium enterprises' (SME) competitiveness, as they must contend with global competition in international markets. To remain competitive is increasingly difficult in this ever-changing landscape and a company's success is to a large degree dependent on efficient operations. For a company to increase their efficiency, performance monitoring is essential. To capture performance measurement data there is an emphasis on real-time data collection, especially with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (referred to as Industry 4.0) and accompanying technologies.Industry 4.0 will ultimately change the competitiveness of companies. The adoption of Industry 4.0, and subsequently real-time data collection, in South Africa (SA) is still relatively limited in comparison to the rest of the world, due to a variety of challenges related to: (i) the economic environment; (ii) the adoption of smart technology; (iii) the collaboration between industries, research institutions, and governments; (iv) education and awareness of Industry 4.0; and (v) the high percentage of unskilled workforces being employed.The working environment in many South African manufacturing SMEs is still severely labour intensive, which can be attributed to South African policy makers and regulators who are trying to alleviate unemployment. However, a significant portion of the workers in these workforces are unskilled, which is a significant challenge to the SMEs. Moreover, these companies are also struggling to leverage technologies to their own benefit. It is argued that the transition towards Industry 4.0 in SA would take a considerable amount of time before the right foundation and polices would be in place.Consequently, for these companies to remain competitive there is a need for an approach to guide them in improving efficiencies through active performance management. For this reason, this study presents a generic approach that a typical South African manufacturing SME, that either cannot or does not want to implement Industry 4.0 principles and technologies yet, can use in order to remain competitive in the everchanging landscape through increased performance management.The generic approach was refined through a continuous process that was followed by using literature to analyse the use case, a Biltong Factory, for which a production management model was developed. The factory work is severely labour intensive, with a relatively low degree of the adoption of technology. Therefore, it can be argued that the Biltong Factory represents a typical South African SME. The production management model that was developed for the Biltong factory used performance measurement data that were captured and analysed through various analyses. The model determined efficient process sequencing and worker allocation per process, while adapting to the types and number of orders received. The information obtained from the production management model assisted with informed decision making to achieve flexible and efficient operations, resulting in an increase of the Biltong factory's throughput, which had a significant impact on the factory's competitiveness.Subsequently, the generic approach towards increasing and maintaining competitiveness was validated with the use of a questionnaire. Industry experts indicated that the approach can be used in future endeavours, which substantiates the argument that there is a need for such a tool for South African manufacturing SMEs.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University