It’s a fact of life for South Africans. We plan our lives around it. But how do businesses that rely on plants for their revenue manage to stay afloat when they have no electricity for several hours every day – and when the schedule changes on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis? Marco Buthelezi, Ribbon Plant Production Manager at Kemtek, gives some great advice on how to do things a little differently to accommodate load-shedding.
First and foremost, plants can only run if their machines are operational. This means that an alternative source of energy has to be identified. In the case of the ribbon slitting plant, a generator ensures that the necessary machinery – including compressors – can operate when Eskom load-sheds.
Buthelezi says: “We’ve had to rethink the way that we do everything. The load-shedding schedule is no longer consistent, making it even harder for us to plan our production and creating unnecessary breaks.”
He goes on to explain: “If, for example, the team arrives at work at 7am but the power is due to go off or come back on at 8am, there’s no point in them starting up the machines only to have to turn them off again while they wait for the electricity to go off or return. In the past, we had some of our equipment damaged by power surges, so now we turn everything off prior to anticipated load-shedding.”
When the team has a big order to deliver, the machines might run for half an hour before being turned off to protect them. “During that time, there’s not much that the team can do other than housekeeping, where it’s required. All our machines require the compressor to operate and the compressor takes 10 to 15 minutes to start up again. These cumulative delays have a significant impact on our operations.”
So even using an alternative source of power, delays are experienced as well as wastage of materials. “It’s not the same as sitting at a laptop, where you can just carry on working uninterrupted. We’ve had to adjust our planning to accommodate interruptions in production.”
He says the business hasn’t increased its prices to cover the cost of running the generator. “We’re going to great lengths to avoid negatively impacting the customer service that we provide and are using all of the systems at our disposal to adjust our planning of production. For example, we prioritise fast-moving line items, ensuring that we keep enough stock to meet customer demand. We do this by adjusting our work schedule so that we can increase the production of those items while we have Eskom power.”
Buthelezi adds that it’s important to be aware of the fact that load-shedding also takes momentum away from the operators. “They’re in the middle of their production run and in the zone, then suddenly they have to pause that and try to pick up where they left off. The psychological impact of that can’t be ignored.”
As Kemtek’s customers are themselves the victims of load-shedding, they’re generally understanding should something impact delivery of their order, according to Buthelezi. “If you do the math, load-shedding itself is two hours on average and it can happen twice during the working day. Our operators have to shut down their machines for 10-15 minutes on either side of that. So, on an average day, we lose an hour a day per operator – and we have seven machines; work that out over the course of a month and you can see how much wasted production time load-shedding costs the business.
“As much as we try to use all of the systems at our disposal to plan accordingly, all of that wasted time definitely has a knock-on effect. And it’s not only our customers that are impacted, we’re also affected by our suppliers’ delays owing to load-shedding.
“You have to bear in mind that deliveries, both to us and by us, are affected by load-shedding and the accompanying traffic light outages. Previously, our drivers could do 15 deliveries in four or five hours. With load-shedding, those deliveries could take an entire day, to the extent that customers might have to wait after hours to take delivery of their order.”
At the start of load-shedding, the business looked at its systems and pulled reports to see what items can be prioritised and what quantities can be stocked. As a result, the business hasn’t experienced many incidents of issues with delayed deliveries or orders not being produced on time. “Our planning and systems seem to have been effective in helping us to adjust our production around load-shedding. Our strength has been being proactive and working smarter to ensure our ability to deliver clients’ needs at all times.”
The three lessons learnt from having to plan production schedules around load-shedding, according to Buthelezi, are that you have to be proactive. You must plan ahead. And you have to have flexible production schedules.
Share