AcuSYS Software Solutions (Pty) Ltd

The South African manufacturing sector has been  in a state of decline for more than a decade (Dube, Hausmann and Rodrik, 2007).  Whilst it is  arguable that the decline is structural in nature, recently it has become  popular to appeal to policy makers to intervene in foreign exchange markets to bring about a weakening in the Rand against the currencies of South Africa’s major trading partners.  It is argued by these advocates of ‘Rand weakness’ that a depreciation in the Rand will provide relief to the domestic manufacturing sector which has been under acute pressure since 2008.

An examination of the data that captures the  relationship between the performance of the manufacturing sector and movements in the Rand over the last three decades reveals a result that runs contrary to conventional wisdom and the arguments of mainstream economic textbooks.  Specifically, the evidence in  the South African economy shows no explanatory relationship between a depreciating Rand and growth in the manufacturing sector.

By focusing on promoting productivity, and sharing gains in productivity, South African manufacturers will establish a source of sustained competitive gains, whilst labour will establish a sustainable source of income growth.  In time, the ‘weak Rand’ advocates will be surprised to find that this world of higher productivity and higher incomes correlates with a stronger Rand, greater global competitiveness of South African firms and higher standards of living for South Africans generally.

Extract from article by Dr Adrian Saville (Chief Investment Officer - Cannon Asset Managers)
See full article with charts and statistics published on Moneyweb

(Full Article)

Extract from article on "The Quality Guru"

There are ten steps to undertaking continual improvement:
1. Determine current performance.
2. Establish a need to improve.
3. Obtain commitment and define the improvement objective.
4. Organize the diagnostic resources.
5. Carry out research and analysis to discover the cause of current performance.
6. Define and test solutions that will accomplish the improvement objective.
7. Produce improvement plans which specify how and by whom the changes will be implemented.
8. Identify and overcome any resistance to the change.
9. Implement the change.
10. Put in place controls to hold new levels of performance, and repeat step one.

For full article please read here

There are a few challenges presented to manufacturers by this article not least of which is accuratley capturing the information needed to determine current performance, diagnose the problem and finally monitor the improvement to prevent slipping back. The TrakSYS tool can be rapidley implemented without significant engineering effort to acheive these objectives by providing;

i) Accurate information of all time losses on the production line (automatic capture of losses duration including short stops).

ii) Providing graphical analysis that allows understanding of the root cause of losses (or at least point to the problem)

iii) Provides KPI's that allow continous monitoring of performance and gains acheived.