Globalisation has changed the world economy. Manufacturers face vigorous competition in both local and export markets and need to have a genuine competitive advantage in order to prosper and grow. South Africa is still predominantly a resource based exporter with high aspirations of developing trade in value-added products. The government has recognised the importance of developing national manufacturing capacity as a means of increasing employment and reducing poverty. To this end the government provides substantial support to both the manufacturing and exporting sectors. The government also negotiated the Southern African Development Community (SADC) agreement which leverages some powerful competitive advantages for South African manufacturers exporting into the region. However, since ratification of the SADC agreement in 2008 there has been no perceptible increase in export activity to the region when compared to other markets. This research study was conducted to determine why this is the case and what factors are influencing the process. A literature review was undertaken encapsulating three principal themes; namely, export barriers, the role of the South African government in the export process, and the SADC agreement. Based on the findings of the literature review a research questionnaire was constructed and subsequently completed by a cross section of manufacturers in the Eastern Cape. It was found that export barriers do not pose a major obstacle to trade into the SADC region. The role the government plays was less conclusive with some successes noted, but on the whole the impact is not meaningfully positive. On the other hand the SADC agreement and the dynamics prevailing in the free trade area do have a positive impact on exports to the region. The level of awareness with regard to the government support initiatives was disappointingly low. The government offers a number of helpful support initiatives which are unknown to more than half the response group. The awareness level of the dynamics prevailing in the SADC region are an improvement but are still surprisingly low. South African manufacturers enjoy significant competitive advantages within the region that are going largely unnoticed. It is recommended, inter alia, that the government consolidates some of its support initiatives, as well as provides a dedicated SADC support desk. Management should adopt an export culture and re-evaluate the opportunity to trade with the SADC region.

M.Com. (Business Science) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

D.Comm. / In recent years, the criticality of increased productivity and competitiveness has accelerated in step with global trends towards privatisation, marketisation, and democratisation, coupled with a more highly educated, more vocal and more demanding consumer market. At a time when the technological gap between South Africa, North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim is shrinking, competitive boundaries are expanding and, as a consequence, consumers have a growing range of products from which to choose. Quality increasingly guides produce selection. Consumer spending patterns have also changed to reflect increased concern for durability, partially as a response to environmental concerns. Increasing recognition of the inadequacies of traditional quality control functions to address the demand for higher quality products and services has launched a seminal transition to a more comprehensive, integrated approach to quality management. Total Quality Management (TQM) refers to the implementation of a "continuous improvement" process to address inefficiencies at all levels of the organisation. There is no single theoretical formulation of the TQM approach nor any definitive short list of practices that are associated with it. It is the product of the work of such quality experts as Crosby, Deming, Juran, and Ishikawa. The writings of these Gurus, as well as characteristics typical of most successful TQM processes. TQM is best viewed as a management philosophy which combines the teaching of Deming and Juran on statistical process control and group problem-solving processes with values concerned with quality and continuous improvement. TQM is endorsed as a powerful vehicle in the transition from the traditional price focus to quality strategies driven by customer expectations. Improving quality and adopting a customer focused orientation are so fundamental that they must take root in the very essence of the organisation. To achieve ambitious quality goals, the TQM philosophy must permeate all aspects of organisational functioning, underscoring the criticality of human resource excellence to total quality processes. The TQM approach is frequently endorsed by the impressive results attributable to it. Marked improvements in productivity and efficiency, profits, customer satisfaction, management-employee relations, job satisfaction, morale, and reductions in costs, inventory, defects and inspection requirements are among an array of reported benefits to be derived from TQM initiatives. The positive relationship between quality and productivity may be largely rooted in the involvement of all employees to execute quality agendas. The benefits of employee involvement from increased productivity, job satisfaction and performance to reduced absenteeism and turnover are well documented. Great emphasis is placed on including all employees in the TQM culture. Employees are expected to take responsibility for quality in two important respects. They are expected to call attention to quality problems as they do their normal work. Perhaps more important, they are expected to accept the continuous improvement culture and look for ways to do their work better. They are also expected to look for ways in which the overall operation of the organisation can be improved to enhance customer service. The most important overall focus of employee involvement concerns locating decisions at the lowest level possible in the organisation. This approach consistently advocates a bottom-up approach to management. Jobs or work at the lowest level are thought of as designed best when individuals or teams do a whole and complete part of an organisation's work process. In addition, it is argued that the individuals or teams should be given the power, information, and knowledge they need to work autonomously or independently of management control. The task of management is seen as one of enabling and empowering individuals or teams to function in an autonomous manner. Management is an enabler, culture setter, and supporter rather than a direction of employee action. This study focuses on the development of the TQM philosophy, and the development of a TQM model to be used as reference in the design of a TQM process in a manufacturing environment. It also endeavours to formulate an implementation process that can be used as guideline for implementing TQM in an organisation. Research has been based on literature studies, extensive experience in the workplace, and interaction with a wide variety of practitioners in the TQM environment. The study concludes that South African organisations can address the issues prohibiting real economic growth by continuously improving every product and service produced through the involvement of an empowered workforce, operating in teams, with the objective of achieving optimum customer satisfaction in the long-term.

As a result of the remarkable demands on electronic and other portable compact devices, the need to produce various miniaturized parts, particularly those made from metallic sheet is growing. In other words, in order for manufacturing companies to stay in competition, they are required to develop new and innovative fabricating processes to produce micro components with more complex features and a high standard of quality and functionality. Microforming is a micro fabrication process that can be employed efficiently for mass production with the advantages of greatly minimizing material waste and producing highly accurate product geometry. However, since the clearance between the rigid tools, i.e. punch and die, utilized in microforming techniques is relatively very small, there is a high risk of damaging the tools during the forming operations. Therefore, the use of forming tools made of flexible materials in sheet metal forming processes at micro scale has powerful potential advantages. The main advantages include a reduction in the production cost, eliminating the alignment and mismatch difficulties, and also the creation of parts with different geometrical shapes using the same flexible tool. As the workpiece is in contact with a flexible surface, this process can significantly improve the quality of the obtained products. Despite these clear advantages, micro flexible forming techniques are currently only utilized in very limited industrial applications. One reason for this is that the deformation behaviour and failure mode of sheet metals formed at micro scale are not yet well understood. Additionally, the experience-based knowledge of the micro-forming process parameters is not sufficient, particularly when flexible tools are used. Hence, to advance this technology and to improve the production quality of formed micro parts, more investigation of the key process parameters related to the material deformation are needed. The main contribution of this work is the development of a novel technique for achieving micro deep drawing of stainless steel 304 sheets using a flexible die and where an initial gap (positive or negative) is adopted between the blank holder plate and an adjustment ring utilized in the size-scaled forming systems developed for this purpose. The interesting point here is that this study presents the first attempt of employing flexible material as a forming die tool in the micro deep drawing technology to produce micro metallic cups at different scaling levels. Polyurethane rubber materials are employed in this study for the forming flexible die with various Shore A hardness. Also, the stainless steel 304 sheets utilized for the workpieces have different initial thicknesses. Various parameters that have a significant influence on the sheet formability at micro scale are carefully considered, these include initial gap value, rubber material properties, initial blank thickness, initial blank diameter, friction coefficients at various contact interfaces, diameter and height of the rubber die and process scaling factor. The size effect category of process dimension was also taken into account using similarity theory. Three size-scaled micro deep drawing systems were developed correspondingly to three different scaling factors. In each case, finite element simulations for the intended micro drawing systems are performed with the aim of identifying optimum conditions for the novel forming methodology presented in this thesis. The numerical models are built using the known commercial code Abaqus/Standard. To verify the microforming methodology adopted for the proposal technique as well as to validate the predictions obtained from simulations, an appropriate number of micro deep drawing experiments are conducted. This is achieved using a special experimental set up, designed and manufactured to fulfil the various requirements of the micro-forming process design procedure. The new knowledge provided by this work provides, for the first time, a predictive capability for micro deep drawing using flexible tools that in turn could lead to a commercially viable production scale process.

In the current fiercely competitive market, engineering design change management in manufacturing companies is a critical factor for business success. Recognised as inevitable in product development, engineering changes may significantly influence lead time, development cost and product quality of new product development. It has been recognised that the earlier change issues are addressed, the greater product lifecycle costs can be saved. In this thesis, three main industrial requirements have been identified in engineering design change management, including: (i) a lack of formal methods to analyse the impacts of design changes on both functional requirements and physical components; (ii) a lack of methods to trace design change propagations; (iii) a lack of methods for conflict resolving in design change management. It is also identified that there is a lack of systematic method for reusing design knowledge to solve design conflicts. The literature review carried out in this project also confirms that there were no unified and systematic methods proposed to meet these industrial requirements. This thesis reports a methodology and tool to meet these requirements and help designers trace, analyse and evaluate engineering changes occurring in the product design phase. A modelling method is employed to enhance the traceability of potential design changes occurred between the functional requirements domain and physical structure domain of design. Based on functional and physical models, a matrix-based method is developed to analyse change propagations between components and help find out design conflicts arising from design changes. A knowledge based method has been proposed to resolve design conflicts by reusing previous design change knowledge. A web-based distributed system has been developed to implement the proposed methodology. An engineering design change example from the collaborating company has been used in a case study to help understand the methodology and prove its usefulness.

Western manufacturing companies are facing a challenging environment fraught with strong competition from India, China and other emerging economies. In this context, the effectiveness of the traditional production concepts of leanness and agility is being challenged. Against this background, the need for new manufacturing paradigms is set to provide new knowledge, techniques, and concepts useful for managers to address the difficulties of today’s business environment. This work extends the concept of production management beyond the achievement of efficiency short-term goals into the realms of strategic thinking by creating both the framework and the indices for an integrated production system. This research presents fit manufacturing as a new production model for a holistic manufacturing strategy that links the short-term goals of manufacturing effectiveness and efficiency embodied in lean and agile production strategies with the long-term objective of sustainable enterprise management. The research extends the concept of integration beyond ordinary manufacturing functions into the realms of strategic thinking. The thesis gives an operational definition for the concept of fit manufacturing by describing the structural and operational characteristics of the production philosophy. It proposes the central theme of fit xxiii manufacturing as a manufacturing strategy essential to creating an integrated view of the factory – inside out and vice-versa. The idea of an overall fitness index combining measures of leanness, agility and economic sustainability is put forward and justified and the necessary conditions for fitness are derived. A case study showing an application of these different measures and the overall production fitness index is presented. This research has shown that the fit production model combines the strengths of lean and agile manufacturing, with the long-term sustainability and viability of the enterprise. The model can be used to assess the performance of the production process, to evaluate investment proposals such as adding a new product line or increasing the overall capacity of the factory, and to build the enterprise of the future.

Three methods, based on Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs), to support and automate the design of dispatching rules for complex and dynamic scheduling problems are proposed in this thesis. The first method employs an EA to search for problem instances on which a given dispatching rule performs badly. These instances can then be analysed to reveal weaknesses of the tested rule, thereby providing guidelines for the design of a better rule. The other two methods are hyper-heuristics, which employ an EA directly to generate effective dispatching rules. In particular, one hyper-heuristic is based on a specific type of EA, called Genetic Programming (GP), and generates a single rule from basic job and machine attributes, while the other generates a set of work centre-specific rules by selecting a (potentially) different rule for each work centre from a number of existing rules. Each of the three methods is applied to some complex and dynamic scheduling problem(s), and the resulting dispatching rules are tested against benchmark rules from the literature. In each case, the benchmark rules are shown to be outperformed by a rule (set) that results from the application of the respective method, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

The fundamental structures that underpin business activities must evolve and change in order to equip companies to thrive in a market whose characteristics are increasing competition and instability. The incremental advances in applied computing technology and business methodologies which focus on improving one aspect of company operations ignore the need for an underlying structure and model through which to engage any and all functions in a consistent and integrated fashion. Indeed, many exacerbate the problem through closed architectures, isolationist views of entity data storage and rigid methodologies imposed on the company that employs them. The Product Model proposed fulfils that role. It is a model of the processes and entities that a company uses to conduct its business, at all levels and across all departments. Two other concepts are exposed: product model data and the design history record. Product model data are the values of instances of product model entities and relations, created to represent a particular design, artefact or object. The design history record captures the data and functions used in a transaction and the order and context in which they are used. To exercise these concepts, a software suite was written, the Glasgow Utility for Integrated Design, Guide. It supports the definition of a proud model and its subsequent use in the creation of product model data. Each interaction with the system is recorded, thus capturing the design history record, which can subsequently be processes to various advantageous ends. The major such uses are for re-use of part information in other designs and the extraction of design best practice with which to augment the company's design methodology. It is a comprehensive record, since all business processes are supported by, and can be transacted through Guide. Guide has been used to validate the adequacy of the product model and has established many benefits through its use. Applications in many spheres are possible; engineering has been the primary focus for exemplars and case studies. The development was carried out under the scrutiny of constant validation and testing in live situations with several industrial partners. Guide is built on industry standard tools and uses relational database technology to store frame-based representations of entities, methods and relationships. The design of project plans is carried out on the same platform used to support the project itself; the design data are not dissociated from the project controlling mechanism. Resources, including staff, are engaged according to requirements and audit mechanisms allow for constant re-evaluation of the project development. Control and communication mechanisms support applications in an extended enterprise environment and the distribution of resources that this entails.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

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