Johannesburg, 06 Sep 2012
Numerous analysts agree that Africa today exhibits many similarities to China and India in the 1990s, and what exists is a window of opportunity for the first movers to grab a share of this growing market. Africa has been identified as the next big growth market, and businesses that fail to plan and act now will miss the boat - as so many did in China and India during their growth years.
This is a key message communicated by Andrew Fosbrook, managing director of Zetes South Africa, at the Zetes Supply Chain Showcase events recently held in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.
"In this fast-moving business environment, business agility is key towards maintaining a competitive edge in the supply chain, ensuring lower stock holdings and generating faster turnaround times," comments Fosbrook, "and business agility requires visibility that in turn is dependent on mobility."
Fosbrook presented a strong case for goods and people identification solutions, and why Africa would benefit from greater uptake of these solutions that have the ability to link the physical world with the digital world, and in so doing provide faster visibility.
"Faster visibility enables process optimisation, increased efficiencies, and ultimately leads to better business decisions," adds Fosbrook.
As one of the world's leading suppliers of automated identification and mobile computing solutions, Zetes is able to assist enterprises with streamlining processes through the use of appropriate technologies such as bar codes, voice recognition, RFID, vision, label, print and apply, smart cards, and biometrics, among others. These technologies play a key role in the numerous challenges facing enterprises.
A key contributor towards Zetes' leading position in this market is the ongoing research and development into these technologies, as well as Zetes' ability to meet the specific needs of its many customers. This is, in part, made possible by the Zetes 3i (Innovate, Integrate, Improve) Competence Centres situated in Europe.
Jean Jacques Schormans , general manager of the 3i Print & Apply Innovation Centre, in Belgium, travelled to South Africa for the Zetes Supply Chain Showcase to outline how this Competence Centre has been successful at designing and manufacturing automated marking, coding and labelling solutions with extensive ERP integration capabilities to continuously improve efficiency, quality control and traceability in accordance with GS1 compliancy.
While Schormans touched on Zetes' technologies that are being successfully implemented in a number of industries, such as the bakery, flower, fruit, vegetable, food process and others, a key focus of his presentation was the pharmaceutical industry.
The pharmaceutical environment is highly demanding and subject to numerous rules and regulations, yet it is one that is faced with ongoing security issues. He described how these challenges were approached and addressed.
Schormans went on to share several case studies that highlighted the Zetes 3i Print & Apply Innovation Centre's ability to meet the challenges inherent in a wide variety of manufacturing environments. Audiovisual footage taken on site at a number of customer operations was used to support the claims made by Schormans around the speed, efficacy and accuracy of Zetes' solutions in the different situations.
"With Africa poised to take the lead internationally in terms of GDP growth, combined with the need for organisations to adopt a more customer-centric approach to their business operations, it would be remiss of any player to enter this phase unprepared," continues Fosbrook.
"Business agility is a key success factor, and through the implementation of world-class supply chain technologies that result in visibility, the supply chain operations of local and global companies will be in a position to take advantage of Africa's anticipated growth," concludes Fosbrook.
NewsEngine PR
Kim Heylen
(+32) 3 260 96 42
kim.heylen@newsenginepr.com
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