Production strategy employed by small, medium and micro engineering enterprises in the Jacobs area in Durban.

Abstract

This study investigated the production strategies employed by the small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) in the Jacobs area in Durban. The research on the production strategies employed by SMMEs supports the government’s initiative of growing small businesses to help create employment and contribute to poverty alleviation in the country. This study is also significant as its recommendations will be of value to SMME owners and prospective SMME owners. The research methodology employed in this study is quantitative research methodology. The questionnaire used in this study elicited views of seventeen questions designed from the literature review. The questionnaire used the five point Likert scale for question two to seventeen, while in question one respondents had to choose from a list of production strategies. The questionnaire was divided into five parts with each part of the questionnaire linked to one of the five objectives of the study. A sample of 30 registered SMMEs in the Jacobs area was used. Though this is a small scale study, if its findings and recommendations are followed by the SMME owners they will add to their businesses an abundance of value. The findings from the field work provided by the respondents to the questionnaire were consistent with the findings in the literature review. The key findings of the study were that there are challenges when implementing production strategies; however the effectiveness, benefits and the risks of not having a production strategy in place far outweigh those challenges, furthermore it was found that with good planning, training and communication the effect of those challenges can be mitigated. A rigorous study on SMMEs that do not use production strategies was recommended as a suggestion for further research to establish if their productivity and profitability were the same as those SMMEs that employed production strategies.