Abstract
M.Comm.
Spoornet ( South African Transport Services before 1991) realised since the early
1980's that pressure from its environment would have a serious effect on its
economic survival. Since 1991 it has had to fight for its marketshare. Road transport
companies started to beat Spoornet on all levels and robbed it of its client base.
Spoornet was forced to reform its customer services approach.
Pantograph-overheadwire entanglements is one of the obstacles in obtaining customer
satisfaction due to the fact that one such incident can cause a train delay of up to
three hours. Due the impact this has on the predictability of service, the Chief
Engineer (Electrical) set as first objective an entanglement figure of 1 per million
pantograph kilometres. A few informal investigations were made into possible
technical reasons but none was made into the possible non-technical reasons.
As hypothesis it was stated that the efforts of personnel in the organisation to solve
the entanglement problem were being handicapped by the lack of motivation, which
caused a atmosphere of conflict and frustration. This frustration and conflict has a
negative influence on productivity and effectiveness which could be the cause of
entanglements. Research done on this was conducted on a dual approach;
Literature study as secondary information.
Structured interview as primary information.
The hypothesis was tested with this study and it was shown that inter-groupconflict,
motivation, resource employment and the current approach all had aspects which
needed to be addressed to solve the pantograph-overheadwire entanglement problem.