DSpace Repository

Welcome to the NWU Repository, the open access Institutional Repository of the North-West University (NWU-IR). This is a digital archive that collects, preserves and distributes research material created by members of NWU. The aim of the NWU-IR is to increase the visibility, availability and impact of the research output of the North-West University through Open Access, search engine indexing and harvesting by several initiatives.

Communities in NWU Repository

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 5 of 20

Recent Submissions

An investigation of the specific writing difficulties of tertiary level Business Communication students in Botswana
(North-West University, 2026) Plapparambil Nadaraja Pillai, Sivaraj Babu; Butler, HG; Siziba, L
The writing of professional business documents in English appears to be a challenging endeavour for tertiary students all over the world. Since English writing skills are seen as one of the priority skills required when graduates seek employment, the writing difficulties often experienced by such graduates could affect their chances of securing employment negatively. In this context, the current study investigated the writing ability of tertiary students at a specific tertiary college in Botswana (hereafter referred to as the ABCD) with specific reference to their writing of appropriate business documents. All these students have to complete a Business Communication course in their first year (An Introduction to Business Communication [IBC]), where the writing of business documents is addressed as part of the course. A comprehensive literature review was conducted as a first step in order to determine the general academic writing difficulties of tertiary students in Africa, as well as the specific writing difficulties of such students in writing professional documents related to a business context. The literature survey further wished to establish whether writing difficulties were limited to tertiary students in Africa or if such difficulties were experienced internationally. Secondly, the researcher wanted to determine empirically whether the IBC students at the ABCD experienced writing difficulties with respect to the writing of business (and general academic) documents both before and after they completed the first year IBC course. Because the Business Communication course needed to prepare the students adequately for the writing of appropriate business documents in the world of work, the study further determined whether students who were busy with their internships (during their 4th year) at various prospective employers in Botswana met the expectations of such employers concerning the writing of professional business documents. Various additional data sets were also collected in order to verify the appropriateness of the IBC course at the ABCD. These included an analysis of the learning outcomes of the IBC course compared with the typical outcomes of other Business Communication courses, an analysis of the final examination papers of the IBC course, relevant information collected from the lecturers who presented the course, as well as observations on how the writing aspect of the course was taught by these lecturers. The results of all these investigations were then used to propose a possible adjustment to the current business writing intervention at the ABCD to address the specific writing difficulties of the IBC students more effectively, as well as to respond more effectively to the expectations of employers.
The increasing role of techno-nationalism in international relations: An analysis of the TikTok ban in the United States
(North-West University, 2026) Babeile, OAJ; Majavu, P
This dissertation presents a critical analysis of the decision of the United States government to ban the Chinese-owned short video sharing social media app, TikTok. Using interpretivist research paradigm and qualitative, document-based research design, this dissertation applies discourse analysis to relevant documents like policy documents, judicial rulings, executive orders, and media sources in the period 2019 to 2026. Using the techno-realist framework, an extension of the realist tradition, the dissertation argues that the ban reflects deliberate techno-nationalism within U.S. China great power competition, rather than verifiable national security concerns. As conceived, techno-realism contends that in today's digital age, technology is the main channel through which power is generated, that corporations controlling these technologies function as geopolitical actors, and that treating foreign-owned platforms as security issues reflects a rational strategy by states rather than a reaction to an objectively demonstrable threat. The dissertation demonstrates that the national security case against TikTok was created and institutionalised by successive speech acts by United States officials, heavily relying on hypothetical risk and as opposed to actual harm. To put it differently, TikTok was banned not because it was proven to be dangerous, but because it was successfully framed as such. The dissertation further argues that the framework for TikTok in this way was not driven solely by the state. Domestic technology firms like Meta and Oracle acted as state auxiliaries, lobbying for the ban, and materially benefitting from it. This dissertation calls this, the State-Corporate Nexus and contends that it is a structural characteristic of technonationalism in practice. The most significant finding demonstrated that the United States government's rejection of TikTok's data localisation proposal, Project Texas, reveals that ownership change was always the goal. In essence, the problem was never about U.S. data, but who controlled the platform. The dissertation situates the ban within a historical three phase evolution of techno-nationalism and finds that it represents the most advanced stage of an escalating trajectory of techno-nationalist intervention in the United States technology policy towards China.
A multi-layered non-linear methodology to introduce alternative handheld drilling technology in tabular narrow reef mines
(North-West University, 2026) van Rooyen, Bertus; Vosloo, JC; van Laar, JH
Any mining operation that is unwilling or unable to adopt technological advancements will face profitability challenges throughout its lifespan. This statement is especially relevant to mature gold mines in South Africa that are air-reliant on compressed air rock drills. These operations were mainly sunk in the twentieth century, when compressed air drilling systems were the only effective method for drilling blastholes in narrow reefs. At that time, electricity was inexpensive and readily available, and the production blocks were close to the shafts. In the twenty-first century, the opposite is true, as compressed air drilling systems at certain mines are no longer techno-economically viable. Available literature indicates that alternative handheld drilling technologies exist but are rarely adopted due to insufficient implementation and change management methodologies. This study employed the case study research methodology to develop a unique pragmatic approach to implementing alternative handheld drilling technologies in mature, deep-level, tabular narrow reef gold mines. The agile method enables mine management to anticipate the urgency for alternative drilling technology before the need becomes a necessity. Past failures were analysed to identify hidden risks and opportunities that had been previously overlooked or underestimated. These failure drivers were used as strategic guidance to formulate the study specific method objectives. Kotter's change framework provided eight purposeful steps to introduce the alternative drilling system. A non-linear, multi-layered methodology is proposed, in which each step hosts an array of strategies methodically crafted to be practical, actionable, and useful. To verify the urgency of the change, the method initiates the change process by providing means to distinguish between correlation and causation. Once verified, a simple change vision is crafted to highlight the benefits to all stakeholders. The vision aims to establish trust in the change idea while aligning interests, ultimately promoting stakeholder buy-in. Responsibility structures ensure that every actionable task has an accountable person assigned. Critical upgrades to the water and electrical networks may be required to support the alternative drilling system. However, methodologies for assessing the mine's standard network support capability were not found in the literature. To fill this gap, this study developed a novel infrastructure evaluation methodology to identify the network's limitations and required upgrades. To implement the change, this study proposes a non-linear experimental approach that does not rely on a finite start and end state. In fact, the change idea is first tested on a small scale to validate its change benefits before committing to large-scale roll-outs. This allows for real-world feedback and prevents impulsive decision-making, which can lead to costly mistakes. By balancing ambition with caution, the method provides a strategy to prioritise crews during the roll-out phase based on their actual drilling performance. A continuous improvement strategy was integrated into the method to enable stakeholders to analyse the change results and formulate and implement improvement opportunities. The improvement strategy is based on the 80/20 principle and prioritises actionablem items by recognising that 20% of effort can yield 80% of the improvement. A mature gold mine was used as a case study to validate the proposed methodology. Hydropower was selected as a feasible alternative drilling technology, and the method was iteratively applied to convert all the stoping crews from pneumatic to hydro drilling. The continuous improvement loop enabled the project team to implement low-risk, viable adjustments to the change process, resulting in a projected 17% improvement in production. This improvement translates into an additional revenue stream generated of R760 million per annum. Ultimately, all the compressed air stoping crews were converted to localised and micro hydropower, making it the first mature South African gold mine originally designed to operate with compressed air stopes to achieve this outcome. This result validates the method's effectiveness in addressing the study's need for an implementation and change management methodology to introduce alternative drilling technology in narrow reef gold mines. The study concludes with an overview of the key lessons learned to achieve this outcome. The novel method proposed by this study is not simply based on theory; rather, it is supported by a firm foundation of real-world lessons learned and validated using a real-world case study to confirm its effectiveness.
Integrating industrial engineering and environmental sustainability for a sustainable competitive advantage in South Africa
(North-West University, 2026) Roopa, Meelan; Siriram, R
Environmental sustainability (ES) remains increasingly relevant to our world and more challenging for developing countries to achieve. At the same time, companies try to remain competitive and often turn to sustainable solutions for a competitive advantage. Concurrently, the field of Industrial Engineering (IE) has received growing interest in all parts of the world, in various sectors, since its inception during the first industrial revolution. The specialised discipline of IE has knowledge that yields productivity gains;yet no taxonomy model gives clear recognition or associations with environmental sustainability. The knowledge poolsof IE and ES currently lack a formalised, visible classification. This disparate leaves developing countries unable to successfully adopt environmental sustainability in order to ensure a sustainable competitive advantage. South Africa is no exception to this.This study strives to investigate IE knowledge to identify ways in which to enhance environmental sustainability in South Africa, using a sustainable competitive advantage. The core focus identifies various strategies, theories, and methods and practices (knowledge components) that are later linked with the strategic, tactical and operational business execution levels. It also investigates transdisciplinary knowledge creation, arguing that IE is capable of producing such knowledge. A staged Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm is followed and contextualised by the research onion using four distinct phases. The research design begins with a Systematic Literature Review and thematic analysis to explore IE knowledge and environmental sustainability as part of the rigour cycle of DSR. In the second phase, the relevance cycle involves interviewing South African industrial engineers and environmental sustainability managers to identify knowledge components for a sustainable competitive advantage, which are applied in industry and academia. The last two phases entail the design and validation of a Pyramid Water Fountain model that ensures a sustainable competitive advantage. The Abstract, Contextualise and Design (ACD) methodology is coined as a transdisciplinary design methodology used to create the artefact. The validation entailed a confirmatory focus group. These findings can thus be generalised to other developing countries by drawing on knowledge from the IE and environmental sustainability domains within transdisciplinary knowledge contexts. This research demonstrates transdisciplinarity and systemic environmental problem-solving, as well as sustainable competitive advantages that are inspired by the notions of integrating knowledge from IE and ES.
Supervised and transfer learning for industrial equipment remaining useful life prediction under limited data
(North-West University, 2026) Maré, T; Bührmann, JH
Remaining useful life (RUL) prediction is a key component of predictive maintenance (PdM) systems, where data-driven models are used to identify degradation patterns and predict impending equipment failure. Despite the advances of Industry 4.0 and the increased availability of sensor data, limited labelled degradation data remains a challenge in PdM. However, limited research has systematically assessed how different machine learning models perform as labelled target data become increasingly scarce. Moreover, when practitioners have access to only a limited amount of labelled target data, related source-domain datasets can be used. However, the domain shift between source and target datasets can affect model performance. This study therefore evaluates classical regression, tree based, and neural-network-based models under varying data-availability constraints. Feature selection and hybrid feature extraction architectures are also investigated to determine their effect on model performance (across the varying data availability constraints). In addition, three supervised fine-tuning strategies, namely full fine-tuning, layer freezing, and progressive unfreezing, are evaluated for scenarios where source-domain data are available. For the case where no labelled target data are available, adversarial domain adaptation is implemented using a domain adversarial neural network (DANN). The experiments are conducted using the Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS) datasets, with FD001 used as the target dataset and FD002 and FD003 used as source-domain datasets. The results show that, within the investigated C-MAPSS datasets and experimental design, no single modelling strategy performed best across all data-availability scenarios. Neural-network-based models generally performed best when sufficient labelled target data were available. Among the evaluated neural-network-based models, the Transformer showed the greatest robustness as target training data became scarce. Under extreme training-data scarcity, the evaluated linear and tree-based models became increasingly competitive and outperformed the neural-network-based models. Furthermore, feature selection was found to mainly improve computational efficiency, particularly reducing the recurrent models' training time by approximately 87% to 97%, although its effect on predictive accuracy varied across the evaluated models. The proposed AUC-RMSE metric further showed that conclusions based solely on aggregate RMSE can differ from those obtained when prediction performance is evaluated across different stages of the equipment lifecycle. For transfer learning, the supervised fine-tuning techniques were most advantageous in the lower-data scenarios, while negative transfer was observed under some higher-data conditions. The greatest benefits were observed for the more similar of the investigated source-target domains, where all three fine-tuning strategies achieved RMSE improvements of more than 50% over the supervised target-only baseline in the data-scarce scenarios. When labelled target data were unavailable, source-only transfer remained competitive in the smaller domain-shift setting, whereas DANN provided greater benefit in the larger of the investigated domain-shift settings. In this setting, DANN improved RMSE over the source-only baseline by more than 27% across all evaluated data ranges, with the highest improvement of 38% observed under extreme scarcity. Under very low and extreme labelled target-data settings, source-only and DANN-based transfer models also became competitive with, and in some cases outperformed, the supervised GRU baseline. These findings demonstrate predictive improvements within the investigated C-MAPSS benchmark scenarios. Future work should evaluate the investigated models on additional datasets to assess the generalisability of the findings. Moreover, the evaluation on real world industrial degradation data could further assess their practical applicability.