Abstract:
Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) form a significant part of national and
regional economic prosperity. They strengthen the capacity to generate employment
and wealth for national and regional benefit. The importance of SMEs to the
prosperity of a society and their contribution to new job creation, coupled with the
recognition that they seem to underperform highlights the need to assist this group of
companies improve their performance.
During the course of this research the author investigated whether SME manufacturing
organisations had opportunities to improve productivity and performance, conducted a
literature review of the application of cellular one piece flow and then tested a model to
implement cellular one piece flow with three SME manufacturing organisations.
This thesis establishes that SME manufacturing organisations do have opportunities to
improve productivity and performance through cellular one piece flow.