Perceptions on factors leading to compliance on an Operations Improvement System at Sasol Wax Durban.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The business landscape constantly faces economic, political and environmental challenges, however a business’ operational system plays an integral part in optimising business functionality and leveraging. Sasol Wax Durban implemented an operational improvement framework in order to standardise and streamline their operation in line with other divisions, after over a year of implementation, the framework was not yet fully functioning. The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the perception of factors leading to compliance with the system. The theories accessed were behavioural, system design and system management. The study adopted a qualitative research approach and purposive sampling technique. Twelve of Sasol Wax’s Production, Planning and Maintenance Supervisors participated through semi-structured, in-depth interviews, which were audio recorded. The data collected was analysed using thematic analysis. The key findings were that the employees’ lack of compliance was contributed by system’s design and system’s management challenges. The finding relating to the system design was a lack of ease of use, while the finding relating to system management was lack of training, communication and leadership. The findings further expand on the issue of training, in that it must be rolled out formally to employees below supervisory level and preferably everyone on site. The study concludes by offering recommendations, i.e. all supervisors must be retrained together with employees below supervisory level, also the framework must be revamped to accommodate the uniqueness of the satellite operation while simplifying it, and leadership must show more visibility in support and enforcing 100% compliance to the framework.