Quality Management in the South African Public Procurement System
Bongumusa Mansuette Bhekamalinda Cebekhulu, Paul A. Ozor and Charles Mbohwa
Department of Quality and Operations Management, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment,
University of Johannesburg
Johannesburg, South Africa
musa.ceb@gmail.com, pozor@uj.ac.za, cmbohwa@uj.ac.za
Abstract
Total quality management principles stress the role of supplier evaluation as a pivotal component of ensuring product or service quality. It is the task of the procurement function to evaluate different suppliers and to select the supplier that will provide good quality product/service at a reasonable price. In the public sector, the supplier selection process is more complicated as there are regulations and legislative frameworks that need to be adhered to. In the South African public procurement system, multiple sourcing through the tendering system, is utilised. Potential suppliers are invited to bid for contracts and get evaluated based on set criteria. The Preferential Procurement Policy Framework provides guidelines for the criteria to be used in adjudicating public tenders. Quality/Functionality is part of the set criteria. There are various methodologies used to assess functionality in public tenders and all those methodologies have their own advantages and disadvantages. Using document analysis, this paper will assess how functionality is utilised and assessed in the South African public procurement regime to determine winning bids. Public tender notice documents were reviewed, and thematic analyses of the data carried out and presented. The results of the study can be used to determine the effectiveness of these methodologies in the management of quality in South African public institutions
Keywords
Quality Management, Supplier Evaluation, Public Procurement
Biography
Bongumusa Mansuette Bhekamalinda Cebekhulu is a SHEQ Practitioner at the National Metrology Institute of South Africa. His qualifications include; a Diploma in Analytical Chemistry from Mangosuthu University of Technology in Durban South Africa, a BTech in Quality Management and an MTech in Operations Management, both from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He has published two conference papers with IEOM. His research interests include quality and operations management. He is currently enrolled for a PhD in Operations Management with the University of Johannesburg.
Dr Paul A. Ozor obtained a bachelor’s degree (B.Engr) in Mechanical/Production Engineering at Enugu State University of Science and Technology, Nigeria in 2001. He worked as project manager with some engineering companies before proceeding to Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), where he specialized in Industrial Engineering and Operations Management. He obtained both Masters and PhD degrees in 2008 and 2015, respectively from UNN. Dr Ozor is a TWAS-DST-NRF fellow to University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and had been awarded the Association of Common Wealth Universitie’s (ACU) early career scholarship in 2014. His research interests include Industrial Operations modelling, Quality management, Systems Analysis, Reliability Engineering, with special emphasis on Maintenance, Failure mode effects and criticality analysis (FMECA), Safety and Risk assessment (SRA) as well as Environmental influence modelling, including climate change effects on water, waste and energy nexus.
Professor Charles Mbohwa is currently the Ag, Executive Dean of Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Johannesburg. He obtained B. Sc. Honours in Mechanical Engineering in 1986 from Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe. He later bagged M. Sc. in Operations Management and Manufacturing Systems in 1992, with a distinction from Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering, University of Nottingham, UK. He obtained PhD in Engineering (Production Systems focusing on Energy and life cycle assessment) from Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan in 2004. Professor Mbohwa is an NRF-rated established researcher. In January 2012 he was confirmed as an established researcher making significant contribution to the developing fields of sustainability and life cycle assessment. In addition, he has produced high quality body of research work on Southern Africa. He is an active member of the United Nations Environment Programme/Society of Environmental, Toxicology and Chemistry Life Cycle Initiative, where he has served on many taskforce teams. He has published over 200 research articles in leading international Journals and had been keynote speaker in many international conferences despite supervising many postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows.