DEVELOPMENT OF A MODEL FOR CAPACITY BUILDING FOR MACHINE TOOLS INDUSTRY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

With a view to achieve industrial growth, Nigeria has tried to establish a sound infrastructure involving among many other things, the establishment of an indigenous machine tools industry, Unfortunately, machine tools industry's development in Nigeria is adversely affected by uncertainties in capacity building in some areas which include technology, manpower, raw materials, equipment and energy. This thesis developed a robust model to achieve a desirable, dynamic and balanced capability of building and upgrading machine tools capacity in Nigeria. The model was developed for determining the machine tools technology capacity level in terms of machine design and machine fabrication capacity. The parameters determined from the model include, manpower, equipment, raw materials and energy capabilities for machine tools design and fabrication. The capacity outcomes were compared with established standards. The shortages and / or surpluses in each elemental capacity were determined using statistical difference method. This established appropriate funds to be allocated to each resource at specific time to yield required and appropriate resources capacity level within the time schedule. A dynamic programming technique with concept or adaptive control theory was used in machine tools resources capacity development. A feed back control system with adjustable coefficients was developed to minimize the effects of the uncertainty of the process parameters identified as manpower, raw materials, equipment and energy. The adjustable coefficient was made dynamic from available fund that was allocated in appropriate proportion depending on the level of development required for each system parameter. A software named CAMTCAD-2008 in Visual Basic was developed for effective implementation of the model. The model was validated with the data collected from Nigerian Machine Tools, Oshogbo. The result of the model has shown an inadequate level of development in resources for capacity building in the machine tools industry at a particular time. The model has revealed an immediate cost benefit in spreading the development of the system over the years: It was further observed from the result that the financial cumulative effect does not favour long-term period of system development: This may be due to variation in time value of money. This model further helped in identifying all the resources that have shortfall or surplus in their capacity levels and provided a clue of what the industry has to put in place in order to meet acceptable standards. The model gave an insight on future development and direction or advancement in, machine tools building in Nigeria thereby making a way for optimal development of machine tools that is technically sound, environmentally friendly and economically justifiable. The resulting software is amenable to practical application of technologically based qualitative forecasting strategies for planning, managing and development of machine tools industry in developing economies like Nigeria. This model has enhanced has enhanced a sustainable structure for future development and direction of advancement in machine tools industry.