Day one at the AIDC conference taking place as part of the South African Automotive Week and I have to be non-patriotic by stating that for me the speaker from India – Rajesh Parim – gave the best bang for the buck.
Take aways from some of the speakers:
- Mcebisi Jonas – “…we need to move to a production environment”
- Rob Davies – “the APDP seeks to support the production of 1.2 million vehicles by 2020″
- David Powels – “Asia and China represent 54.7% of the 80.274 Million vehicles produced in 2011″. “South Africa produces 0.66% of vehicles worldwide.” “In September 2012 1659 vehicles were sold per day – the highest figure since 2006.” “Doubling production from 600 000 to 1.2 million units will not double the number of jobs in the OEM sector [presently at 30 to 35 000].”
- Anthony Black – “There is too much reliance by the automotive sector on government support.” “70% of vehicles sold in South Africa are imported.” “Africa is the last frontier of the automotive industry.”
- Rajesh Parim – “Most automotive companies operate at a 30 to 35% production efficiency”
- Jeremy Maggs – “I look for the negative so that you can give me the positive.”
- Clem Sunter – “South Africa is the 32nd strongest economy in he world.” “We are one event away from our own Arab Spring.” “South Africa needs inclusive leadership.” “We have 500 decent schools and 23 000 poor schools.” “At $9.00 to the rand we are a cheap tourist destination.” “Big business is not going to create jobs.”
And in all the other static from opinion leaders I heard mostly words such as; “challenges”, “problems”, “concerns. “what we should do”, “compounding the problem” yada, yada.
I could have been sleeping for a while but the only really upbeat speaker was our friend from India, Rajesh Parim, who offered practical focused tips that our business leaders would do well to focus on – the broken window concept for productivity.
What I took away from Rajesh was that focusing on the little things like pride for a job, machine and work station as the building blocks of success.
Rajesh Parim
The associated exhibition area at the Boardwalk boasts 300 exhibitors and to ‘avoid’ the R50.00 entrance fee you can pre-register on the SAAW Web site.
