Designing a Service and Replenishment Model for South Africa’s Low-Income Communities

Abstract

Almost 80% of the world’s population is currently underserviced or not serviced at all. Being serviced is defined by basic access to running water, electricity and sanitation (Prahalad, 2006). South Africa is no stranger to this lack of service, as the poor distribution of wealth causes most services and products to be available only to a fraction of the population. This document aims to introduce a new way of looking at service design for low income communities. A large part of this project attempts the redesign of certain key business components from an Industrial Engineering point of view, in order to enable the development of a sustainable business model in low-income communities. The proposed project will aim to develop a service and replenishment model for the low income movie theatre. This involves analysing the service needs of a typical movie theatre and then re-engineering the service to fit the needs of low income communities. This unit will be known as the Busy Box. The scope of the project will include the full design of the service and support systems for the Busy Box theatre as well as logistical, social and technical considerations for this unit. Additionally, this project aims to create a profitable business hub out of the Busy Box Theatre, not only to help reduce income inequality but also to expand the market of large corporations and gain customer loyalty. That way, when these customers enter the mainstream economy, they will be more likely to have brand recognition and will develop a need for certain products and services. Finally, the Busy Box Theatre is meant to transform from a movie theatre by night into an educational support centre by day, providing much needed educational support in low income communities and thus educational considerations must also be taken into play. It was determine that an offering can be made for 10-20 Rand per viewing. The next step involved designing technological and innovative approaches to overcome the specific challenges faced in these communities. This involved developing a custom design process for the Busy Box and similar business ventures. After this process, the Busy Box prototype was built and tested at Pretoria Boys High School and then moved to a live test in Soshanguve. The results from the site test of the concept were outstanding. The Busy Box design was capable of producing its own power and running for over 8 months without the need for major services. The Busy Box was developed and transported for less than the scheduled budget of R230 000 and currently maintains less than R10 000 in running costs. Overall this project aimed to create a new theory for developing businesses in conditions where it was previously considered extremely difficult to do so and has succeeded in doing so.