IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rbs/ijbrss/v14y2025i5p81-91.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Innovation: A labour productivity improvement strategy for the automotive assembly organisation in South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Walter Dumisani Zondo

    (Durban University of Technology (DUT))

Abstract

Over the years, productivity performance has been the subject that generated enormous interest amongst economic scholars. This shows the value of productivity on business growth. Hence, the implementation of improved interventions for productivity improvement requires appropriate innovative practices for industries. This sentiment supports the importance of innovation for productivity improvement. Consequently, this study assesses the influence of innovation on labour productivity in an automotive assembly organisation in South Africa. It has been established that the manufacturing industry in South Africa has low labour productivity compared with its BRICS counterpart countries like Russia, India and China. As a result, this study centres its attention on innovation, considering low levels of labour productivity in the manufacturing sector of South Africa. It was quantitative in design and the investigation was achieved by collecting pre-and post-innovative quarterly data for spoilage and the achievement of production targets. The study analysed the production and related experiences of an automotive assembly organisation, operating in KwaZulu-Natal in the eThekwini Municipality that had adopted an innovative seat-handling manipulator in its assembly process. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model, using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), was used to analyse data. The study indicates that spoilage rate and the achievement of production targets have the relationship with labour productivity after an innovative seat handling manipulator was implemented in the organisation. Key Words:Automotive Assembly Organisation, Labour Productivity, Innovative Seat Handling Manipulator, Spoilage Rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Walter Dumisani Zondo, 2025. "Innovation: A labour productivity improvement strategy for the automotive assembly organisation in South Africa," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 14(5), pages 81-91, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:rbs:ijbrss:v:14:y:2025:i:5:p:81-91
    DOI: 10.20525/ijrbs.v14i5.4079
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ssbfnet.com/ojs/index.php/ijrbs/article/view/4079/2856
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.20525/ijrbs.v14i5.4079
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.20525/ijrbs.v14i5.4079?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rbs:ijbrss:v:14:y:2025:i:5:p:81-91. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Umit Hacioglu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ssbffea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.