An investigation into manual labour reporting within South African Airways Technical

M.B.A.This study is concerned with an investigation into the manual labour reporting system as currently operated by South African Airways (SAA) Technical. This was necessary, as a large percentage of the time sheet hours were not being captured with the net result being that costs and the resultant effects were becoming distorted. The primary purposes of this research was to identify the reasons for the current difficulties being experienced with labour cost recovery within SAA Technical in order to propose changes to rectify the impasse. The following reasons for the labour hour losses were identified: • Ineffective operational control methods. • Deployment of geographically dispersed data capturers. • Computer programming errors in the transfer routines. These problems naturally lead to a loss of control. The following improvements after rectification were noticeable: • In January 1997, average labour hour under recovery was as high as 46%. After rectification, losses were down to 15% (cf. 4.3). • The management accounting reporting document was greatly revised; thus rendering improved service to and understanding by the users. • The automated labour reporting bar scanning system currently being implemented would also benefit from the rectified computer transfer program. It may thus be concluded that the research was beneficial to SAA Technical operation and provided solid reasons for the labour hour losses. If the recommendations as presented further on in this study are adhered to, there should be no reason for the present situation not to maintain or improve the current improvements