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A commodity management process for the South African Navy

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2005. / Transformation brought many changes to the South African Navy (SAN). The
"old way" of provisioning, which involved spending enormous amounts of
money on maintaining high stock levels and running supply processes
through an overly large staff component, is over. The new Navy will have to
survive with fewer funds and a reduced staff. This changed circumstance calls
for a more efficient and effective provisioning process.
The current provisioning process handed down from pre-transformation days
is outdated and totally obsolete. The result is that Commodity Managers
(CMs) do not have an adequate process for the planning, decision-making
and control functions of their supply support activities. This absence of an
updated, clearly defined provisioning process is causing poor end-user
service delivery. This research project starts with a literature survey (Chapter 2) in which
published practices are reviewed to substantiate the need for and importance
of a process that includes planning, decision-making and control. This
research concentrates on government and military practices and investigates
processes that support operational planning and sustainability levels. It also
includes the principles of logistics and articles on lessons learnt by other
military organisations.
The second step involves interviews with provisioning managers of similar
organisations to the SAN (Chapter 3). The result of these interviews identifies
new and interesting concepts that may assist in achieving a more effective
provisioning system within the SAN.
A statistical investigation (Chapter 4) involving provisioning data provides
insight into the bottlenecks and highlights the need for a provisioning-package
process-smoothing capability. Interviews with SAN members (Chapter 5) provides insight into the input
interface challenges and identifies the need for a tracking system that gives a
real-time indication of requirement progress.
The findings of this research provides recommendations (Chapter 6) at
national strategic, military strategic, operational and tactical levels regarding
the planning, decision-rnaking and control functions that will lead to the
establishment of a valid provisioning process for the Commodity Management
subsection of the SAN. This will ensure that a standard process is followed
enabling the effective provisioning of SAN end users using fewer funds and
with a reduced staff.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:cput/oai:localhost:20.500.11838/2053
Date January 2005
CreatorsCarter, Bruce
ContributorsSlabbert, A., Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Faculty of Business and Management Sciences. Dept. of Business Administration.
PublisherCape Peninsula University of Technology
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
Languageen_ZA
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Rightshttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/za/

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