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Writing from the programme

Notes from the shop floor.

A bi-weekly newsletter, occasional papers, and our annual State of Manufacturing letter. Written by the partners, for operators and investors.

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Every edition.

12 editions · 4 papers
All
Newsletter
Papers
Operations
Digital stack
AI & ML
Policy
Edition 08
19 Mar 2026

Map before you move: a guide to the Viable System Model.

Operations · Diagnostic
VSM as a pre-diagnostic. Used correctly, it forces which subsystem is actually broken and which one is just loud.
12 min read
Edition 07
05 Mar 2026

Why your factory's AI isn't working yet.

AI & ML · Digital stack
Pilots that stall are not bad models. They are bad substrates. A field note on the instrumentation debt behind every failed ML POC.
8 min read
Edition 06
19 Feb 2026

Standard work is not a document. It's a conversation.

Operations · Kaizen
The most common Kaizen failure mode is producing binders that live in cupboards. What durable standard work actually looks like on a shift.
9 min read
Edition 05
05 Feb 2026

The three dashboards your plant actually needs.

Analytics · Digital stack
Real-time, short-interval, strategic — and why every chart that doesn't sit in one of the three gets deleted.
10 min read
Edition 04
22 Jan 2026

Cobots earn their keep when Kaizen has done its work.

Automation
Collaborative robots automate what is already stable. Six mini-cases on where cobots paid back in under 18 months — and three where they didn't.
11 min read
Edition 03
08 Jan 2026

Stacking the incentives: APDP, S12-I, SEZ.

Policy · Commercial
The programmes every mid-market manufacturer should be using, and the three structural reasons most leave money on the table.
14 min read
Edition 02
11 Dec 2025

How we think about OEE — and why the baseline is manual.

Operations · Measurement
The politics of the first measurement. Why digital OEE before manual OEE is the single most common transformation failure.
7 min read
Edition 01
27 Nov 2025

Why Digital Kaizen.

Thesis
The founding essay. The coupling of process knowledge and digital tooling, and why mid-market South African manufacturers are the highest-leverage substrate in emerging markets.
15 min read
Working papers

Longer reads.

Working papers, conference submissions and our annual State of Manufacturing letter.

Working paper · 2025

The process knowledge gap: diagnosing the productivity J-curve in SA manufacturing.

Empirical study across 40 mid-market manufacturers. Documents the 18-month dip in productivity that follows most digital transformations, and proposes the Digital Kaizen coupling as the mitigating structure.

IJOPM · Preprint 28 pp · PDF
Annual letter · 2025

State of manufacturing. South Africa, fourth quarter.

Catalyst's annual letter. Commentary on energy, localisation, APDP reform, SEZ uptake, and the supply-side conditions facing mid-market manufacturers into FY26.

For LPs & pipeline 36 pp · PDF
Working paper · 2025

A reference architecture for mid-market manufacturing.

Catalyst's vendor-agnostic reference architecture. Covers edge, gateway, historian, analytics and AI layers. The technical appendix to the Digital Kaizen programme.

Technical 52 pp · PDF