Browsing by Author "Ally, Yaseer Haroon Tar."

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Factors limiting the success, growth and sustainability of SMMES in Ladysmith.
(2018) Ally, Yaseer Haroon Tar.; Hoque, Muhammad Ehsanul.
Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a critical role in developing the economy by creating employment and propelling growth. Their contribution is however stifled due to extremely low levels of entrepreneurial activity despite multiple government support initiatives for SMEs. Within their initial two years of operation 63% of businesses fail and above 70% of businesses fail within five years of inception. Consequently, this exploratory study endeavours to gain an elaborate understanding of the challenges that SMEs in Ladysmith experience, as well as the factors that limit their growth and promote the competitiveness and sustainability of SMEs based in Ladysmith. The conceptual framework for the study developed by performing an extensive synthesis of the literature pertaining to the challenges, growth limiting factors and critical success factors (CSFs). The interpretivist paradigm was chosen to comprehensively understand this phenomenon, which was based upon the perspective of SME managers or owners, as the literature was well developed. Data collection occurred via the means of semi-structured face-to-face interviews of eleven SME managers/owners based in Ladysmith. These participants were chosen using the maximum variation subset purposive sampling. The validity of the study was bettered by the use of data investigation triangulation and data triangulation. The most prominent challenge experienced by SMEs in Ladysmith are government regulation, access to finance, crime and corruption, infrastructure and access to markets. The most persistent growth bottlenecks to SMEs in Ladysmith are access to markets, access to finance and government regulation. The preponderant CSFs are entrepreneurial characteristics followed by managerial competency and SME characteristics (as passion, motivation, willingness to learn, risk-appetite and prior experience). It was recommended that SME managers/owners; engage in entrepreneurship or business-related studies as well as improving their leadership and interpersonal skills, engage in more business networking and jointly employ security to combat crime and dilute crime-related expenses, in order to enhance their competitiveness and sustainability. It was also recommended that government; develop entrepreneurs’ skills/knowledge via mentorship programmes, facilitate access to finance for SMEs using incentives and simplify regulatory compliance to reduce the administrative cost burden on SMEs by moving regulatory processes online. The Alfred Duma Local Municipality was recommended to create an environment to spur growth and create employment via incentives to attract businesses to Ladysmith. The municipality should also prioritize unemployment by creating a database of suitably skilled jobseekers and refer them to SMEs that require these skills.
Reduction of the environmental impact of a soft drink manufacturing plant.
(2016) Ally, Yaseer Haroon Tar.; Buckley, Christopher Andrew.; Mercer, Susan.
South Africa is a water stressed country with an increasing demand for water. Pressure is being exerted by greater pollution loads and reduced flows in the rivers. Environmental legislation is therefore, becoming more stringent, in order to reduce environmental degradation and promote sustainable development. The soft drink industry in South Africa is a major water user and polluter. The primary objective of this thesis is to reduce the environmental impact of a soft drink factory. The study was conducted at a soft drink company located in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. This company had been experiencing trade effluent charges in excess of R 70 000 per month as well as additional fines being levied by the local municipality, due to the effluent being consistently out of specification with respect to Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and sugar concentration. The scope of the study has therefore, been defined to focus on the reduction of effluent strength and sugar content, hence reducing the environmental impact. The various concepts or tools to achieve sustainable development were investigated and the Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production (RECP) assessment methodology combined with the methodology to achieve materials efficiency were utilised in order to provide recommendations to solve the effluent issue at the soft drink plant. The RECP procedure follows a five phase approach of planning and organisation, pre-assessment, assessment, feasibility analysis and implementation and continuation. The methodology to achieve materials efficiency uses a 3 step approach of drawing a material flowchart, creating a material balance and generating options. The sources of the effluent were identified and quantified and the factors influencing the quantity and quality of the effluent from these sources investigated. It was found that the primary COD causing component is sucrose. Approximately 11.4% of the identified losses occurred as a result of staff negligence or a lack of staff training, while other losses were due to easily rectifiable technological shortcomings, or were unavoidable. Solutions were developed in the categories of source elimination or reduction and end-of-pipe treatment. End-of-pipe treatment options were only considered if source elimination and reduction techniques could not be implemented. A feasibility analysis from an environmental aspect yielded the optimum solution to be a combination of source elimination and reduction techniques and one of the end-of-pipe treatments. The end-of-pipe treatment entails the transporting of high strength effluent to a nearby co-digestion facility, where energy will be produced in the form of methane. The implementation of this optimum solution has the potential to reduce the COD load of the effluent by 10 583 kg COD/month which is 85% of the identified losses. Various other recommendations were developed to reduce the water consumption and hence decrease the volume of effluent to drain.