Numerous analysts agree that Africa today exhibits many similarities to China and India in the 1990s, and what exists is a window of opportunity for the first movers to grab a share of this growing market. Africa has been identified as the next big growth market, and businesses that fail to plan and act now will miss the boat – as so many did in China and India during their growth years.

This is a key message communicated by Andrew Fosbrook, managing director of Zetes South Africa, at the Zetes Supply Chain Showcase events recently held in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.

“In this fast-moving business environment, business agility is key towards maintaining a competitive edge in the supply chain, ensuring lower stock holdings and generating faster turnaround times,” comments Fosbrook, “and business agility requires visibility that in turn is dependent on mobility.”

Fosbrook presented a strong case for goods and people identification solutions, and why Africa would benefit from greater uptake of these solutions that have the ability to link the physical world with the digital world, and in so doing provide faster visibility.

“Faster visibility enables process optimisation, increased efficiencies, and ultimately leads to better business decisions,” adds Fosbrook.

Photo: Andrew Fosbrook, managing director of Zetes South Africa, focussed on the need for increased agility in African supply chain operations.

As one of the world’s leading suppliers of automated identification and mobile computing solutions, Zetes is able to assist enterprises with streamlining processes through the use of appropriate technologies such as bar codes, voice recognition, RFID, vision, label, print and apply, smart cards, and biometrics, among others. These technologies play a key role in the numerous challenges facing enterprises.

A key contributor towards Zetes’ leading position in this market is the ongoing research and development into these technologies, as well as Zetes’ ability to meet the specific needs of its many customers. This is, in part, made possible by the Zetes 3i (Innovate, Integrate, Improve) Competence Centres situated in Europe.

Photo: The Zetes team in South Africa that assists managers of supply chain operations in Africa to make informed decisions on how to improve their supply chain activities.

Jean Jacques Schormans , general manager of the 3i Print & Apply Innovation Centre, in Belgium, travelled to South Africa for the Zetes Supply Chain Showcase to outline how this Competence Centre has been successful at designing and manufacturing automated marking, coding and labelling solutions with extensive ERP integration capabilities to continuously improve efficiency, quality control and traceability in accordance with GS1 compliancy.

While Schormans touched on Zetes’ technologies that are being successfully implemented in a number of industries, such as the bakery, flower, fruit, vegetable, food process and others, a key focus of his presentation was the pharmaceutical industry.

The pharmaceutical environment is highly demanding and subject to numerous rules and regulations, yet it is one that is faced with ongoing security issues. He described how these challenges were approached and addressed.

Photo: Jean Jacques Schormans , general Manager of the 3i Print & Apply Innovation Centre and Gerrit-Jan Steenbergen, vice president of the Zetes 3i voice recognition, imageID, RFID and group strategic mobility solutions Innovation Centre travelled to SA to present at the Zetes Supply Chain Showcase events.