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There are some painful conversations we must have in society. Established businesses always pay lip service to co-existing with small businesses. This is because small businesses can threaten and kill anti-transformational established businesses . These established businesses engage in harmful practices to thwart competition, employing foreigners in top positions depriving locals the opportunity to acquire strategic skills, closed shop agreements wherein work is given to selected associates, cartels that collude to divide markets and an old boy network that shuts new entrants out of funding.

Governments have responded by enacting affirmative action laws, but such have been discredited as a hotbed of cronysim, influence peddling, corruption and systemic looting of public resources.

And there is a tsunami coming. We are staring at a jobs blood bath following the commencement of fourth industrial revolution.

Small business entrepreneurs must come up with innovative solutions to navigating the challenges they face, for, they must grow so as to absorb the workers who will lose their jobs to automation and the rise of artificial intelligence. Society must also play its part and nurture, support and shield small business to grow.

Let parties contract freely but acknowledge that the future of Africa is in small scale business - Swemdac Investments We are in an invidious place where we must give expression to the Constitutoonally recognised right of freedom of association while trying to reddress past injustices. Affirmative action is too blunt an instrument and some companies are refusing to transform. I think that the way foward is to grow s...

https://swemdac.com/index.php/2017/07/09/south-africas-big-banks-killing/

South Africa's Big banks killing adoption of e-commerce South Africa's Big Banks killing adoption of e-commerce by pretending not to charge for internet banking and seeking to secretly re-coup their costs

http//:www.eckysithole.blogspot.com/2015/12/improving-plant-overall-equipment.html?m=1

In the mid 90s this author
had one tough boss. He
knew his job and did not
suffer fools gladly. We had
an operational problem
which we attributed to
engineering. Because it was
affecting production, we felt
that we were justified in
engaging the services of an
external engineering
consultant and, in the
normal course of reporting,
our request landed on the
boss' desk.
And he called us into a
meeting. Boy, were we
dressed down. He made it
clear that he was not going
to pay for consultants when
he had assemblied a team
of Engineers whom he was
paying to do the job. As is
normal in such highly
charged meetings, he made
it clear to us that if we
thought that the heat in the
kitchen was too much, we
knew what to do. Thereafter
he gave us 48 hours to solve
the problem, else there
would be blood on the
floor.
Needless to say that we
managed to solve the
problem within the given
timeline. The incident taught
this author a number of life
lessons. First was that it
reflects negatively on you to
call in external experts to do
your job. In fact, it could be
a career limiting move.
Second, the need to keep up
with the latest engineering
practices and skills was
hammered in. When the
push came to a shove, we
did our research and did
solve our problem. Finally,
that a person must consider
bringing in consultants as
the last resort. In all
earnest, we collectively
chose to pass the buck at
the first sign of a problem
and our boss was within his
rights in calling us to order.
But as the author's career
progressed, he had many
occasions to wish that he
had the support of external
consultants. There are
instances when you simply
have to acknowledge that
you do not have a particular
skill or knowledge needed to
solve a particular problem.
In the process of running a
plant, there is plenty of data
generated, which if
processed timeously, can be
converted into useful
information that will help
the plant to operate very
close to its design capacity
and produce high quality
products, with little waste.
Any executive normally
needs specialist staff to help
him process this
information. An example of
this is Reliability
Engineering. The Reliability
Engineers job is to improve
a company's Overall
Equipment Effectiveness
[which from Total
Productive Maintenance is
taken as the product of
plant availability multiplied
by the operational efficiency
of the plant multiplied by
the quality rate] while at the
same time working to
increase the Mean Time
Between Failure for a group
of poorly performing
machine populations.
These are broad figures that
can easily be financially
quantified for the benefit of
a company's top
management, but may mean
very little to the company's
technical and operational
staff.
For operational and
technical staff, the Reliability
Engineer engages with them
through the 'leading
indicators of Reliability'.
These leading indicators
help the Reliability Enginee
to improve:-
Maintenance planning,
scheduling and control
compliance
Planned Maintenance Route
Compliance
Proactive Maintenance plan
compliance
Predictive Maintenance Plan
compliance
while minimising delays
occasioned by
Spare parts shortages
Tools and
Poorly trained personnel
Studies have shown and this
author knows from personal
experience that if someone
dedicated to tracking and
taking remedial action when
the above metrics are
breached yields better
results in the long term than
when everybody is expected
to track them, for nobody
will take responsibility.
Large companies can afford
to set up such staff
functions and this shows in
improved profitability and
enhanced product quality,
positively impacting on a
company's ability to remain
a 'going concern' as
accountants are wont to
say.
Smaller companies tend to
overload their existing
executives by holding them
responsible for these added
metrics on top of their
normal workloads, without
a commensurate increase in
support staff.
For such companies,
negative results filter
through at year end, staff
morale is low and staff
turnover high, for the
company is figuratively
expecting the said
executives to make a silk
purse out of a sow's ear.
To be fair to the company's
top management, because
the plant is small in size, the
additional personnel are not
needed on a permanent
basis. It is for such that
external consultants can be
a viable option.
They will only come in when
needed. They work across
many companies and do
bring such experiences to
the table. They have the
time to do a more indepth
analysis of the plant's failure
data and hence can process
it into useful information
much better than the
resident executive, with his
overloaded plate, can. Also,
they have become narrow
subject specialists, knowing
a small area of professional
knowledge to great depth,
unlike the company's
executive, who is expected
to be a jack of all trades.
So, in the final analysis, as
much as the author's boss
was right in demanding
enhanced performance
from the author and his
team, there are instances
when it is in the best
interests of the company to
bring in external consultants
to support its executives.
Reliability Engineering is one
such instance.
So, if you are an operations
or maintenance executive
who is not happy with his
plant's Overall Equipment
Effectiveness and/ or Mean
Time Between Failure
values, WHO ARE YOU
GOING TO CALL?

Improving Plant Overall Equipment Effectiveness and Mean Time Between Failure through... In the mid 90s this author had one tough boss. He knew his job and did not suffer fools gladly. We had an operational problem which we attributed to engineering. Because it was affecting production, we felt that we were justified in engaging the services of an external engineering consultant and, in…

Reliability Centred Maintenance and its role in ISO 55 000 certification https://lnkd.in/eRQTBFm

Reliability Centred Maintenance as a discipline, came of age in 1978, when Nowlan & Heap of the United Airlines published the seminal tome titled Reliability Centred Maintenance after being commissioned to do so by the United States Department of Defense. It was the culmination of a paradigm shift in maintenance thinking that resulted in the change from the 'don’t fix it if it ain't broke' school of thought prevalent before 1930 to the realisation that maintenance work must only be performed on assets to preserve their functions. Underlying this paradigm shift is the acceptance that assets are deployed by users to satisfy a particular need or function. The asset is said to have failed when it can no longer meet the functional specifications that led to its deployment. Hence, the duty of the Asset Care manager is to preserve a system's functions by identifying and selecting those assets under his jurisdiction that would benefit from having maintenance tasks defined, the intervals for executing the tasks fixed, the minimum specifications for human resources, spare parts and special equipment detailed, so as to execute a maintenance regime that would preserve the asset's function(s) at the lowest life-cycle cost. Reliability Centred Maintenance, through practical, consistent and diligent application, has been proven to have the power to help organisations focus its resources on maximising results while at the same time managing risks.

Looked at in this perspective, Reliability Centred Maintenance becomes a tool for creating a solid foundation for the Asset Care Plan that is aligned to the Business Plan of the organisation through a parent and child relationship with the Production and Operations Plan, being influenced by and impacting on the Finance Plan, the Marketing Plan as well as the Human Resources Plan. This framework ties in very well with the 'break down the silos' approach that realises and acknowledges business as a system composed of various sub-systems which must interact harmoniously to achieve stated business objectives.

Reliability Centred Maintenance has a strategic, operational and tactical applicability. At the strategic level, it impacts on change management, for, if done well, it causes the paradigm shift from reactive to proactive maintenance organisation, ideally promotes a lean and mean asset care department, life cycle asset acquisition, utilisation and disposal as well as knowledge acquisition, retention and dissemination, to mention but a few strategic benefits. At an operational level, Reliability Centred Maintenance assures product quality, plant utilisation, spares optimisation and productivity improvements. As a tactic, Reliability Centred Maintenance drives planned maintenance schedules, labour training, motivation and utilisation, including plant performance data capture, recording and analysis.

Reliability Centred Maintenance has been used as a standalone maintenance methodology, to augment and complement Business Process Re-engineering, Total Productive Maintenance, as well as a driver for Enterprise Asset Management systems, including Reliability Engineering.

With such a wide range of applications, it is surprising that Reliability Centred Maintenance is viewed skeptically by long suffering industry executives. It is the intention of the author to address why this is so. In the main, the blame should lie on the practitioners for giving Reliability Centred Maintenance a bad name.

To highlight but a few issues:-
• A number of under-qualified practitioners are passing themselves off as experts. Get me clear. It is possible for a dedicated and diligent person to acquire sufficient grounding and knowledge needed to successfully undertake a Reliability Centred Maintenance assignment through self-study. But, you need a stroke of luck to find the right material for self-study. Reliability Centred Maintenance makes use of Engineering know-how, production and operations management insights, statistics and probability theory, the body of knowledge encapsulated under the Guided Logic Approach and plenty of common sense. In today's connected world, appropriate software tools help speed up the project's completion and at times may be the critical success factor needed to complete a project. Knowing what to read and to what depth is a stab in the dark for many people going the self-learning route. To counter this, there are a number of professional institutions offering training for interested people. But, acquiring the qualification is just the beginning. You, as a practitioner are encouraged to join a professional society and engage in Continuing Professional Education to complement the practical work experience you will be getting.
• Mis-selling or over-selling Reliability Centred Maintenance. Reliability Centred Maintenance has been successfully implemented in a wide variety of industries the world over, with spectacular results. Of importance to the corporate level managers is the ability of Reliability Centred Maintenance to unlock the Hidden Factory, through increasing plant utilisation and reducing quality related defects. In some instances, by the mere implementation of Reliability Centred Maintenance, production volumes (as measured by turnover) have gone up by as much as up to 35℅ without incurring any capital expenditure. It is such productivity improvements that convince many a company to invest time, money and effort, with the hope that the vendors will help the company achieve, if not the same 35% productivity gain, then something close to that. Now, you get a vendor of Computerised Maintenance Management Systems passing his CMMS off as the key for unlocking Reliability Centred Maintenance. After the system is bought and installed, there is little or no productivity gain recorded and the CMMS vendor, after pocketing the cheque, exonerates his system from blame and recommends that the company engages a Business Process Re-engineer. This expert measures 14 or 39 pillars, assigning scores to them, produces very nice graphs and Polar plots, but achieves very little in terms of productivity gains. Later the client realises that the Reliability Centred Maintenance program he wanted was treated as a Black Box that required some other expert to open and decipher. Next follows a vendor of Failure Mode Effect & Criticality Analysis software or, if you are lucky, Reliability Centred Maintenance software. The point is that Reliability Centred Maintenance is a scheduled maintenance system designed by and to be implemented through people buy-in. Admitted, all the above are important and make it easier to do Reliability Centred Maintenance, but, when the client wants to see a productivity improvement of at least 15% above current levels, to justify his expenditure, any self-respecting practitioner must ask himself if he can deliver, before spoiling the market for everybody else. Proper RCM is conducted when:-
The analysis is designed and structured to preserve a system's functions
The analysis identifies how a system's functions are disrupted by identified failure modes
The analysis ranks the failure modes by importance in proposing how to mitigate against them
For the important failure modes, the analysis proposes a number of applicable candidate maintenance tasks and encourages the selection of the most effective one.
• Conditions in Host Company not conducive to the Reliability Centred Maintenance effort. At the heart of Reliability Centred Maintenance methodology is the need to change the maintenance culture in the organisation. This requires buy in from the people initially, those members who are selected to perform the analysis and subsequently, on the shop floor. If past productivity improvement efforts led to some workers being dismissed, Reliability Centred Maintenance will be a hard sell. It is the right of management to make some unpopular decisions needed to ensure the survival of the business, but at the end of the day, if management is to secure the co-operation of the workers, they have to address the question: - What is in it for the workers? Some of the answers relate to satisfaction to be had in being part of the team that led to the creation of a credible and acceptable maintenance schedule, the opportunity to learn more about their job, career progression opportunities and other factors management can think of.

It is imperative that both management and consultant be trustworthy. More than anything, the presence of a trust deficit will kill any productivity improvement effort dead in the water. From a Reliability Centred Maintenance consultant point of view, there is no escaping the need to immediately deliver some outstanding tangible results to keep everybody motivated. (S)he must carefully choose a pilot project that can deliver these results. The results are there to be achieved. All that is needed is the willpower to begin.

We started this conversation on Facebook for 3 objectives,
1. As a company, to communicate with our stakeholders our vision and receive feedback on what we are doing right and be corrected when we do wrong.
2. To create a unique recruitment tool. A company is about its employees and associates. They are the ones who translate the company's vision into reality. In the process of translating the vision to reality, the employees and associates earn a living and in some instances, acquire a lifelong trade or skill.
3. To market our specialist skills to industry, so that industry will have the confidence to mandate us to execute commission on their belalf. It is these commissions by industry that will provide our employees and associates with first the opportunity to acquire skills and experience and second financial freedom.

As the year begins, it was important that we review whether our campaign has been successful. I am happy to share with you my assessment.

On the issue of customer feedback, nothing has come out. Maybe we missed out in capturing our customers. Maybe the review period was too short and again was interrupted by the Christmas break. Maybe the customers felt for us and did not want to hammer us into the ground on account of 'poor service'.

Whatever the reason, we are grateful to our customers. We exist because they support us and we will never take them for granted. May God bless all of you bountifully so that you can continue supporting us in the future.

We have acknowledged that a company is all about its employees and associates, who transform its vision into reality. They are the engine for growth.

It amazes me that in a country effectively with an unemployment rate of 40%, we are not attracting the kind of people we seek as associates. In this first round, we are inviting at least 50 people to join us. This is what we would want to define as the minimum number of people to enable us to reach our critical mass for sustainable growth in the future.

The people we are looking for must have the never say die attitude. We are starting at the bottom of the pile and we will work hard to reach the top. Everybody will start off earning commission, but, if you pass our probationary period, we will put you on a basic salary plus commission. Obvious, there will be hard but well rewarding work and an opportunity to challenge your self-imposed limits. We operate in a knowledge economy and will assist those who are willing to embark on professional development courses.

It is said that 'The early bird gets the worm, but it is the second mouse who gets the cheese' By this, we acknowledge that some people are content to let others do the hard work and when things are going right, request to be accommodated on the basis of some special privilege they believe is theirs. As a policy, we value long and dedicated service, coupled with appropriate academic and professional certificates. Hence, those who join now and are prepared to study have a bright future with us.

As will be explained later on, we have some ambitious projects running. We acknowledge the hardships of being the pioneers and we have planned measures to mitigate them. How fast we deploy these measures will depend on how hard we work to reach the milestone that will trigger the intervention.

Industry support has been outstanding. As we speak now, we have signed service agreements in the following sectors.
Water and Waste Water management. We shall be pushing the above to institutions and discerning individuals. We acknowledge the shortage of water engineers and seek to play a part in training and utilising these water engineers, initially in South Africa and later, into Africa.
Energy efficiency and Alternative Energy. We entered into agreement to source customers in the above, conduct energy audits and help implement proposals to drive down energy wastage as well as a company's carbon footprint. This comes at a time when there is an energy deficit in South Africa and Africa in general and carbon emmissions are topical issues. We are honoured to be involved in these noble initiatives.
Maintenance Engineering and Management. ISO55000 was adopted in January 2014. It is the international standard for engineering asset management. Though voluntary at this stage we anticipate that in the near future, governments and insurance companies will compel companies to manage their assets in terms of this international standard, as a means of mitigating against environmental, societal and financial risks in using assets. We are proud to have been appointed an agent for one of the world's leading Computerised Maintenance Management Software, to seek clients and implement solutions. Internally we have know how on Reliability Centred Maintenance, a leading program in designing maintenance tasks as well as the optimal time interval for performing the tasks.

This is were we want to be in the future. We have a plan to take us from our present circumstances to our desired operating platform. It requires that we identify 50 go-getters who firstly believe in themselves and secondly, can believe in our vision.

I say to you mothers, I say to you fathers, entrust your children to us and we will shape them into responsible citizens. And to you young man and young woman Get from hiding behind your mother's skirt and start shaping your future. Join us and you will never be the same.

Why are we doing what we are doing, you may ask.

We are a business and like all businesses, we are seeking to grow. The growth has to be in a niche area, where we expect nominal competition. So, here goes:
1. We realise and understand there are a lot of small companies that have deployed capital resources into manufacturing equipment. Unfortunately this capacity is utilised between 35% and 60%, meaning that small business, even if it may turn a profit from year to year, is sitting on under-utilised capacity.
2. The owners of the existing businesses would like to use this idle capacity, but they are constrained by that they are selling to a small clientel base, for, it becomes expensive for them to try and market their limited product range away from where the company is located.
3. Apart from the small issue of raising capital, we saw that it would not be wise to seek to add extra capacity when other industries are not utilising their existing capacity fully. This significantly increases the chances of failing as a company, since we would be a new player, competing against long established competitors.
So, we decided that we will approach the various companies and sign them up to market their products and services, to create a basket of the goods and services. Because we will be carrying a basket of say, water treatment equipment, electrical re-winding services, cleaning chemicals and other products, we are more likely to sell our products to any customer we approach, since we will be having a diverse product range. Thus, our sales reps are well positioned to earn decent wages and salaries.
4. We have learnt to respect the power of local knowledge. This is where members of this group and future customers will help.

We know that if we give you the basket of goods and services to sell, it is easy for you to get customers as you will be able to quickly match which product goes to whom.

If there is a product that is needed in your area and we are not having, we will come to know of it, as you will tell us.

If there is a supplier in your area who is making good products, but is not fully utilising his available capacity, you will inform us and help us to grow our basket of services.

You may be sitting on a cashpile or you know somebody who is sitting on one, who wants to invest in a high return, low risk cash generative company, like ours.

If your son, daughter, relative, neighbour, friend, church mate is struggling to find his position in life, you will recommend him to us, for, you have a genuine concern to see him succeed.

And the beauty of it, we will pay you for using your local knowledge.

In this manner, we will create winning partnerships.

As I have said before, umkhulu lo msebenzi. We have started the train and we are slowly picking up speed. The onus is on you to jump aboard and find yourself a comfortable seat early.

So, dont delay. Jump in with both feet and decide how you can contribute to your own success. Others have already started.