Master’s of engineering management : graduation rates lagging behind growth rate

Abstract: The Engineering Management degree at master’s level has been taught at a South African higher education institution for more than 20 years. The student enrollment numbers have seen significant growth over the last decade, with a year-on-year growth varying from 20% to 39% each year. The coursework master’s program consists of a number of lectured modules and a research component which accounts for fifty percent of the program. The students are very successful in completing the lectured modules, but they are less successful in completing the research component. The main problem is that students complete the lectured component within the required time, but when they start doing the research component they either take longer than the allocated time or they never reach completion..

Global IT project performance through effective stakeholder management: a conceptual framework

Abstract : Multinational organisations face several challenges during the implementation of projects across country borders. These projects are referred to as global projects and involve various stakeholders with diverse demands and requirements that need to be understood, balanced and managed. Despite challenges in managing stakeholders, global IT projects need to comply with several structures of governance during implementation. The objective of this study is to develop a conceptual framework for improving global IT project performance. The conceptual framework provides insight into how several types of governance through stakeholder management processes enhance global IT project performance. The methodology used was based on a literature review to understand the subject being researched. Through the literature review, the level of governance as well as the impact from a global perspective in managing various stakeholders were evaluated. This paper presents a description of four quadrants that constitute stakeholder management processes. The findings indicate that corporate governance, IT governance and project governance should be implemented along with stakeholder management processes. An understanding of global influencing factors is also required. The proposed conceptual framework indicates the key features associated with global IT project performance in each quadrant

Dynamic capability theory as an input variable for supplier performance evaluation and selection

Abstract: Supplier performance evaluation and selection are two fundamental constituents of optimal sourcing decision making and are the main contributing factors to an effective supply chain and most importantly to the procurement process. Based on the literature and management experience the present research established that current evaluation criteria are intra‐organisational focused and give prominence to the use of supplier’s strategic capabilities. Little or no consideration is given to the influence of the changing business environment and the fact that there are many proposed evaluation criteria that exist today. To close the gaps the research introduces the theory of dynamic capability as an intrinsic criterion for supplier performance evaluation and also as the generic guideline to reduce the current multi performance evaluation criteria. The proposed model will empower the procurement practitioner with the criteria logic to identify the suppliers able to meet the demands of the changing business environment. This research is largely based on the literature and supply chain management experience to arrive at the conceptual model. The future research should validate the conceptual model through survey and case study research design methods to enable the conclusive generalisation of the results. The research contributes by conceptualising the generic model for supplier performance evaluation that combines supplier strategic capabilities and dynamic capability variables as the significant input variables for optimal sourcing decision making. The research also provides academics and the supply chain fraternity with enhanced knowledge of the literature of dynamic capability variables as generic criteria for supplier performance evaluation

A comparative study of soft skills amongst the Washington accord engineering degree graduates with industry expectations

Abstract: Graduate engineers in the 21st century are expected to be well rounded engineers after graduating with a Washington accord degree. Academics and industry concur that engineers need to have a set of soft skills in the 21st century. Competence in soft skills may equally have a great influence over an engineer’s general career achievement as hard skills competences. The purpose of this study is to investigate the magnitude to which the gap between Washington accord engineering degrees offer and industry expectations. The study found that graduate engineers with a Washington accord (WA) degree are taught the following soft skills; communication skills, teamwork, entrepreneurial skills, problem solving skills, decision making, ethic, self management skills, life long learning, and creativity/innovation. In contrast, industry found that graduate engineers are competent in the following soft skills; interpersonal skills, flexibility, teamwork, decision making skills, problem solving skills, and self management skills. Moreover, the result revealed that graduate engineers are taught the following soft skills; communication skills, ethics, and entrepreneurial skills but were not inline with industry expectations. The findings suggest that by revising the engineering curricula, it may be able to produce engineering graduates who are more prepared to meet industry expectations

Prototyping during the requirements elicitation process in the development of an underground unmanned aerial system

Abstract: Prototyping of subsystem and system components is most often thought of as a development task. This paper shows the usefulness of prototyping as an activity in the requirements elicitation process, prior to any developement activities. It is approached from the field of engineering and technology management. It uses the Requirements Engineering approach to identify tools and methods for the development of the requirements for an underground unmanned aerial system for use in South Africa’s’ gold mines to inspect box-holes and ore-passes. Box-holes and ore-passes are vertical tunnels through which the ore must pass in moving from the stope, where it is mined, to the shaft, where it is hauled to the surface for processing. The more familiar new product development framework is compared to the requirement engineering process. The prototypes of a number of subsystems are presented, namely, a quadrotor platform, a platform preservation sensor array, an optical flow sensor for position holding, a vision sensor for operator visualization, and an operator interface. The perceived significant technological challenges are discussed as motivation in the choice of these subsystem prototypes that will be used in the interviews that are to form the basis of the requirements elicitation activity

Energy efficiency through the use of technology in South African industry

Abstract: South Africa’s increasing cost of industrial energy has recently caused the country to be ranked among the top five countries in the world with the most expensive industrial electricity tariffs. For various reasons, energy is often not optimally used in industry. According to Zavanella and Zanoni (2009), there has been a growing interest in more rational and responsible consumption of energy, especially in industrial processes and services. This research study demonstrates the use of technology for energy efficiency in the industry, in order to reduce energy consumed per unit produced on industrial process plants

Requirements elicitation interviews and applications for an underground remote-piloted aerial system

Abstract: Being underground is dangerous, it really is. People shouldn’t go there if they don’t need to, especially in an age where driverless cars by Google and shopping delivery by Amazon are on the brink of implementation in unstructured public environments; but held up, not by technology, but by wrangling about legislation covering liability determination, and fears of hacking drive-by-wire systems. Underground mining is a secure (from an IT perspective), structured, and predictable environment with limited and controlled human access – an ideal place for automated or remotely piloted systems. This paper outlines the semi-structured interview process that was executed to determine the requirements for an underground remotely piloted aerial system (URPAS). The potential applications are explored; including search and rescue, the business-orientated activity of regularly scanning rockpasses to predict and prevent blockages, and scanning a blocked rockpass to determine the blockage location and structure. An even more ’out-of-the-box’ application, using the vehicle to deliver explosives to the underside of a blockage, was included in the brainstorming discussions. Interviews with ten mining and unmanned aerial systems experts were conducted with a questionnaire as the primary data collection tool. The questionnaires were analysed to determine the representatively of the sample set, and therefore the validity of the gathered data, based upon expertise ratings in each of the relevant areas of knowledge: mining, surveying and mapping, and remote-piloted aerial systems. The goal was to identify the key performance requirements of a U-RPAS, and determine the feasibility of such a system being developed. A specialized company providing a scanning service emerged the preferred implementation method, and the rationale for this choice is presented. As context, the sub-system prototypes used in the brainstorming section of the interviews are presented, as are the implementation scenarios discussed in the interviews. It is thus shown that this method of requirements elicitation is suitable for this type of technology implementation project

Virtual team performance factors : a systematic literature review

Abstract: What constitutes a successful virtual team or not is of great importance considering their widespread use in business. Despite this, the failure rate of virtual teams remains relatively high compared to non-virtual teams. This study conducted a literature review that analysed 135 articles from peer-reviewed English journals. The results were coded into groups of factors and the impact of these groups on performance and their status in literature were determined. It was found that beneficial interpersonal characteristics such as empathy or behavioural flexibility were the most commonly identified positive factors in virtual team performance, followed by trust, and the appropriateness of functionality and richness of communication technology used by the team. The most significant failure factors in virtual teams were found to be the effects of geographic and temporal dispersion, the effects of cultural diversity, and negative leadership qualities such as bias

Requirements degradation for the creation of a first prototype

The requirements engineering process is typically executed, irrespective of the process model chosen, for the final commercially viable system. The system requirements generated are for a system deployed and used in its final form and function. However, the first prototype that is generated is typically representative of a minimum viable technology, and represents a degraded set of the initial system requirements specification. Typically, a first prototype is used as a technology demonstrator, and its failure or success will determine the continuation of the project, with success triggering the allocation of additional financial and personal resources. This paper explores techniques for requirements degradation that can be used to form the system requirements specification for the first prototype. A requirements Engineering methodology is proposed based upon a survey of literature. It takes into consideration the characteristics of the project, i.e. a market driven, technology implementation research project with limited budget and a flexible timeline executed in an academic environment. The techniques must take into cognizance the main risk items, and core requirements, that need to be demonstrated in the minimum viable technology to secure the future of the project. The degradation cannot undermine or jeopardize the future success of the commercially viable system in determining the subset of requirements for the minimum viable technology

Factors affecting the performance of a manufacturing supply chain, and the organization

Abstract: Due to constant failure in delivering the products to customers on time the defence manufacturing organization introduced the supply chain phenomenon into its operations in an attempt to improve its performance (on-time delivery). This research aims to identify if supply chain performance is affected mainly by social or technical factors and also outline which of these factors have the highest effect on the performance of supply chain. The importance of this research is that it will determine if the performance of supply chain is affected by technical or social factors and also how the organization is affected by these factors. This research employed a case study and made use of both qualitative and quantitative data to allow for data triangulation in order to minimize biasness and increase the credibility of the results. The findings indicate that supply chain performance is affected by both social factors and technical factors, however the impact of these factors on both supply chain and the organization is different. In summary, this research will provide insight to the factors that affect the performance of supply chain and accordingly provide methods to minimize or eliminate these factors and therefore reducing their effect on supply chain and the organization