News

Citation

(2013), "News", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 62 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijppm.2013.07962gaa.002

News

News

Article Type: News From: International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 62, Issue 7.

Take the challenge

The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) has launched the aviation-based problem challenge (APC) to challenge the industry and relevant stakeholders to develop innovative solutions for the long-term development and sustainability of the industry. The APC will be a competition-based programme that will tap into the collective knowledge and expertise of the industry and academia to find means and ways to address identified problem statements.

The first challenge under the APC is to develop automated equipment and processes to improve the loading and unloading of baggage onto narrow body aircraft, which is a labour-intensive process. CAAS is inviting proposals to develop working prototypes or proofs-of-concept for the complete automation of this process. A budget of S$10 million has been set-up to fund shortlisted proposals. The winning concept will also receive a cash prize of S$500,000 and additional support for the actual implementation of the solution.

Right truck for the job?

Maximizing trucking productivity is the top concern for 44 per cent of fleet managers, a recent study from GE Capital Fleet Services has revealed. Logistics managers are placing an increasing focus on maintaining operating costs and meeting cost savings goals.

One of the biggest challenges to improving productivity was specifying the right truck for the delivery. In total, 22 per cent of respondents said specifying the most efficient unit was the most important service their fleet management company could offer. Tracking down time and reducing total costs of truck ownership were also high on the list of inhibitors to productivity.

Our wheat

The Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture has launched the Ethiopian Wheat Productivity Initiative in collaboration with the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency. The initiative is intended to help increase yields and productivity in order to reduce Ethiopia's reliance on imported crops.

The initiative aims to improve the output of one million wheat farmers by at least 50 per cent, eventually replacing all current wheat imports with domestic supply. This should save USD 250 million in foreign exchange over the next three years.

Banking on success

The National Bank of Oman's Academy of Excellence-training arm recently held a workshop on “Productivity and quality management” for Operations and IT Staff.

The custom-designed course covered: identifying work processes, analysing and mapping its components and planning improvements. Various quality tools and techniques were discussed and participants worked on real-life cases and applied the tools and techniques on these cases, throughout the programme.

Low impact coffee

Mexico's President Enrqique Peña Nieto recently inaugurated a 1.6 billion peso expansion of a Nestle instant coffee factory in the central city of Toluca. The project has boosted capacity by 30 per cent and made it the world's largest facility of its kind.

As part of the remodelling, a biomass boiler was installed to process spent coffee grounds from the production process for use as fuel, and this should cover 60 per cent of the plant's electricity needs.

Peña Nieto also praised the increase in productivity which has seen the 30 per cent rise in capacity with only a 10 per cent rise in the size of the workforce.

Lifting productivity

The Durban Container Terminal is set to see a “massive jump in productivity” with the commissioning into service of seven of the biggest container cranes in the southern hemisphere by Minister of Public Enterprises Malusi Gigaba yesterday.

Representing an investment of R700 million, the bright red ship-to-shore cranes dominate the skyline along the terminal's North Quay and were ordered from China's Zhenhua Heavy Industry (ZPMC).

Transnet said ZPMC was the only company among those bidding for the contract that could meet its supply requirements and schedule of delivery.

Each crane has the capability of lifting four 6 m or two 12 m containers up to a maximum of 80 tons at a time, which, the minister said, would assist the terminal in increasing the number of containers that could be moved on to or from a ship in an hour.

Darwin was right

Charles Darwin predicted that a plot of land growing distantly related grasses would be more productive than a plot with a single species of grass in On The Origin of Species, first published in 1859. Over 150 years later, a new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC), reveals Darwin was right; environments containing species that are distantly related to one another are more productive than those containing closely related species.

Since Darwin made the first prediction, many experiments have demonstrated that multi-species plots are more productive. Marc William Cadotte, assistant professor in UTSC's Department of Biological Sciences, showed for the first time that species with the greatest evolutionary distance from one another have the greatest gains in productivity. The results of his study will be published in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).