Conference Proceedings (Industrial Engineering)
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Browsing Conference Proceedings (Industrial Engineering) by Subject "Business performance"
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- ItemAn empirical analysis of operational disturbances and their impact on business performance in manufacturing firms : case tooling industry South Africa(South African Institute for Industrial Engineering, 2014) Dewa, Mncedisi Trinity; Matope, Stephen; Van der Merwe, Andre Francois; Nyanga, L.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Globalization has managed to break trade barriers and the manufacturing environment has become more competitive. Market share is now determined by quality of goods and services irrespective of location. Today’s business environment for manufacturers requires flexible, responsive and robust systems, which produce a variety of products at competitive prices. To gain a competitive edge, the paradigms of e-manufacturing and distributed manufacturing have been recently advocated by researchers as potential solutions. However, irrespective of these technological advancements, manufacturing firms in the tool and die sector are still struggling to perform efficiently in the face of recurring operational disturbances. The paper identifies the most prevalent operational disturbances which occur in South Africa’s manufacturing firms in the tooling industry and their impact on business performance. A field study was conducted on a number of organizations which form an industrial cluster in the Western Cape manufacturing sector and seven typical disturbances were evaluated together with their root causes. The results gathered portrayed the correlation between identified disturbances and their corresponding consequences. The findings of the study were recommended to be used to develop models and computerized systems to solve the pending pandemic.