Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology
School of Engineering
Department of Engineering and Technology Management
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Research in the Graduate School of Technology Management is focused on technology and innovation management, project management, maintenance and physical asset management and systems engineering, and lifecycle management.
The development of an industrial framework for the civil aviation industry in South Africa was investigated by researching the comparative industrial technology capabilities and business competitiveness of both emerging and developed economies. Critical success factors were identified for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) electrical contractors in the construction industry in South Africa, and reasons for the lack of skilled artisans in South Africa were investigated from an artisan perspective. The mixed performance of science parks was researched in terms of the bright and dark sides of interorganisational knowledge transfer relationships. A contribution was also made to resiliency management in a globally integrated economic network.
Prof Leon Pretorius delivered a paper on technology forecasting: the case of computational fluid dynamics at the 4th International Conference on the Management of Innovation and Technology held in Bangkok, and was awarded the Outstanding Paper Award. Innovation in the automotive component sector is being investigated as part of a larger international project. The picture that emerged from this survey is of an industry that lies in the global automotive value chain, but competes as a high-quality provider, rather than an innovator. Much development and upgrading will be required to transform this industry from comprising of dependent subcontractors to one that comprises of knowledge creators.
The Department of Engineering and Technology Management is the hub of higher education in project management and contributed to research in this field with contributions on project governance for large capital projects, the need for a specific management strategy for a clean development mechanism (CDM) and the risk management potential of a stage/phase-gate project management approach. A maintenance strategy model was developed for static equipment, based on inspection methodologies and a risk management analysis.
The Lifecycle Management Group made contributions by assessing the social sustainability performance of the petroleum industry in the Niger delta of Nigeria, assessing the viability of the South African biofuels industrial strategy, systems analyses and the sustainable transfer of renewable energy technologies with a focus on remote areas of Africa, determining the most important factors and use of the focus group technique for the selection of sustainable energy technology, and developing microsimulation as a tool for the estimation of the carbon emissions balance for South Africa.
Contact person: Prof L Pretorius.
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