Mudrust Group

This week we shall embark on a series on manufacturing and how SMEs can enhance opportunities in the manufacturing sector for wealth creation and social-economic transformation.

what is Manufacturing? this is a process of converting raw materials into products. It involves;
1. Product design
2. Selection of raw materials
3. sequence of processes using technology to transform raw materials into products

Project development is the process of taking an idea or concept and turning it into a reality. It involves a range of activities including planning, design, development, testing, and implementation. Project development is a complex process, requiring a range of skills and knowledge, and must be executed with precision to ensure success.

To kick off a project development, the first step is planning. The planning stage involves identifying the project's objectives, defining its scope, creating a detailed project plan, and identifying the resources required. The project plan outlines the tasks, timelines, and budgets for the project, and guides the project team through the development process.

Once the planning stage is complete, the design phase begins. The design phase involves creating detailed specifications for the project's requirements and features. This process can be done with the use of requirement elicitation techniques such as interviews and workshops, or through research and analysis of user's needs.

Following the completion of the design phase, the development stage commences. Here, the project's development team converts design specifications into functioning software or system components. In the case of software, developers use coding or programming languages to build the application or website.

As development progresses, the project team carries out rigorous testing to ensure that the system or application is functioning correctly and meeting the user's requirements. Testing starts with unit and integration testing, then moves to system-level testing, and ends with acceptance testing, which involves validating the software against the user's needs.

Finally, once testing is complete, the implementation or deployment phase begins. In the implementation phase, the developed software or system is released into production and made available to end-users. The team will also provide ongoing support to ensure that the system is working as intended.

Project development is a comprehensive and comprehensive process that requires skilled professionals and adequate resources to achieve success. Successful project development requires a complete lifecycle approach, from planning to design, development, testing, and deployment. Each phase of the development lifecycle must be carefully planned and executed to ensure that the project is delivered on time, within budget, and according to the defined specifications and requirements. By following a structured project development process, teams can confidently deliver high-quality software or systems that meet user's needs, improve business processes, and achieve organizational goals.

Our focus today is on production planning. This is the process by which estimation and projection for required production level. THE BANK IS INTERESTED TO KNOW WHERE THE REVENUE TO PAY THE LOAN WILL COME FROM. The production plan gives a good picture of where the revenue will be generated from. The cash flows are also directly correlated with production plan.
The Key questions to ask when doing a production plan are:
1. What quantities are demanded in the market? This information should be generated during market analysis
2. What capacity do I have to facilitate production of anticipated volumes? Is it sufficient or do I need to increase or do outsourcing?
3. What is likely scenario in the competitors’ production plans? This is to avoid glutting the market
4. Is the raw material supply framework, logistics, sourcing, and quantities favorable?
After assessment of the 4 questions above, then develop a production plan to include;
(a) Production projections, maybe for next 1 year, 2 year, it’s important to look at the entire loan period.
(b) Financial plan, the production plan feeds to the financial plan
(c) Human resource capacity to produce and market the products.
The entrepreneur must clearly and thoroughly work on the production plan, it is the engine of the business plan. we provide proven insights on production planning and analysis Vis a Vis how it feeds to other plan, i.e. market plan, financial plan, and HR Plan. CBA

Product commercialization
1.Feature complete: Denoting a product having all the functionality intended for the final version but requiring some improvements and fixes before release.
2.GTM (go to market) ex*****on
intelligence is gathering and analyzing information relevant to a company's market - trends, competitor etc.
segmentation: creating market subsets based on demographics, needs, priorities, common interests, among others
messaging: this is crafting messaging for communicating with the consumers, go-to-market flow, and promotion of a product.
3.Customer success involvement : This process focuses on involving the customer in the final review before the product is produced for the market, all concerns and customer feedback are integrated so that the product released in the market had high chance of succeeded and generate revenue for the enterprise.
4.Product launch : This is a coordinated effort to bring the new product to the market.

Prototyping is an experimental process where design teams implement ideas into tangible forms from paper to tangible product. It involves four steps: 1. Prototyping: this is a process of developing an experimental version of the real usable product. this is used to test the concept and the process. 2. MVP (Minimum Viable product)- this is a product that has enough features to attract early adopters customers. they will be useful in validating the product. 3. Market research - this is the process of determining the viability of the new product or service. this is done directly with the potential customers. 4. Business plan for the product-thus is a document describing the business of the product, it profiles how money will be made by the product, leadership & staff, financing, operation model, revenue versus costs, cash flow, growth, production plan and so on. We at CBA we walk with SMEs to Ensure, the product development process yields the desired results for the enterprise.

esterday we focused on product Ideation, our focus is on definition, it involves, defining a product that an entrepreneur wishes to develop for sale to the market. 3 levels are involved: discovery # definition of core functionality & contextualizing the market. The three levels of product definition includes: 1. product discovery; which is a process of understanding what the user problems and needs are, then validating them before product development. This helps the product team in deciding what features to prioritize or build. 2. Defining the core functionality of the product- involve definition of benefits for the users 3. understanding market size & revenue potential i.e. definition of the size of the market i.e. potential buyers of the product within the market potential revenue it can generate.

Good Morning all, we are discussing tools applicable for by SMEs for their growth and sustainability. in this series, we are focused on product development process. today our focus shifts to step 1 of the six steps in the diagram below. : this involves, generation notes and discuss the idea with product team or consultant. The purpose of this step is to describe the idea, either from insights, reading books, observation and so on.The imagination of the entrepreneur is translated into a written concept describing various elements of the idea. when written, next step is to discuss the written Idea with a consultant/product team in the firm.The product of the discussion often is a a detailed concept that will be taken through scenario analysis e.g. -feasibility -feasibility -feasibility among others.All this is done at the ideation or conceptual level. This is important as it ensures only the most appropriate products concepts. we at CBA are supporting SMEs to navigate through the world of enterprise growth and sustainability modeling.

Africa has had frameworks for connecting to one another, but the systems do not favour Africans, we have too many foreign intrests desiring to exploit resources, opportunity and any other advantages as Africans are left to scavage and wait for foreign aid. let's us (Africans) focus on Renaissance for socio-economic transformation & social wellbeing of Africans. Let's put our energy on , they have the , & to transform Africa.

What is the cost of multinational Economy in Kenya in terms of wasted , , export of labour, government process manipulation and outright frustration of indigineous . Time for reflections.