A Counter to Doomsayers of Manufacturing in Australia
Every day people in positions of ‘opinion authority’ make choices about what ‘opinions’ they will offer on a whole array of subjects. And it would be fair to say that over the past five years or so, many of those ‘opinion authorities’ have been significantly negative on Australia’s manufacturing sector. There’s no doubt that the sector is undergoing change which includes a shrinking base and fewer employees. And allowing me to counter with just one observation – it seems to me that the vast majority of these ‘opinion authorities’ have NO CLUES as to how well some areas of Australian Manufacturing are going,
Now I’m not going to go too extensively into this observation but any of these opinion authorities might for one just go and visit Hilton Manufacturing in Dandenong, chat to them about their ongoing growth, their continued demand and some of the initiatives they take beyond the manufacturing sector.
And let me prompt you just one step further because Australia’s manufacturing supply chain has brilliance all the way through it. One case in point in the Industrial Design company Katapult Design in Byron Bay. They probably make surfboards or hair beads right? Er no. Katapult Design have just won a Global award, the Red Dot award which is the ‘Academy Award’ of Industrial Design for their design work in Medical Products. The Best of the Best 2013 award
Katapult were approached by an overseas company to undertake the design work. Nathan Pollock and his team do other brilliant work for companies around Australia – manufacturing companies. So the next time any of these ‘opinion authorities’ open their mouths about the future of manufacturing in Australia, tell them to pull their heads in, or at the least, take their blinkers off
Potentially the biggest area of untapped competitive advantage (and arguably one of the biggest areas where costs could be reduced) is within supply chains. Most approaches to Supply Chain Management are linear and isolated with one player trying to squeeze the other with no regard to the overall effect of the full supply chain. It’s…
Read More >There’s a shift underway in the mining industry that will likely catch Australian airlines out if they aren’t paying attention – the shift toward ‘remote’ mining. Remote mining is being pushed by the automation ability across all aspects of current mining technology, which at the basic level, means that fewer humans are needed on site…
Read More >Simple question really. Or is it? In this quick article I provide an overview of the difference between strategy that is D.E.A.D and A.L.I.V.E Think of it as a potential ‘do this’ collection for your Organisation You can download the article for free here – ‘Is your Organisational Strategy D.E.A.D or A.L.I.V.E?’
Read More >Lots of thoughts for the year already underway, with some covering a range of ideas from ‘don’t cut corners on relative incidentals when the project is significant for you’ to ‘you can’t change your approach if you keep thinking inside the same box’. But for now a reminder about planning for your future: If you…
Read More >In thinking about the year ahead I’ve decided to call it the International Year of Resilience. With everything that appears to be going on in the world there’s unlikely to be any quick fixes and so I provide for you here below, my Top 10 Tips for building more resilience into your lives. If you…
Read More >The United Kingdom’s Committee on Climate Change has released a report that shows rising household energy costs are not caused by the apparent burden of environmental policies. Instead the core factor is increases in costs increases of Oil and Gas as the Energy resource sector taps into a ‘growth’ market. You can have a…
Read More >After a great although too brief trip to Islamabad in Pakistan, I joined Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Radio Darwin to discuss the idea of official reports for travelers and who you should believe. Sometimes we fear the unknown because we aren’t well enough informed. In the absence of any other information, the Official line is…
Read More >It’s taken me a while to get the Tourism Thinking piece together given the extensive travel this year that has enabled me to assess where Australia’s tourism is not getting things right. This update won’t paint the full picture (a couple of clients have first crack at this research) but it is important enough to…
Read More >I alert you from the outset that I’m about to make a massive leap of potentially an supportable scientific theory in discussing a potential Wildcard event. If you’re only interested in the concrete real stuff, head elsewhere after you get about half way. I’m going to make a massive leap first of all and then…
Read More >n this MP3 with Paul Dale on ABC Darwin radio we chat about the recent fly past of a large chunk of rock called Asteroid YU55, and what we might do as a species in managing a potential Asteroid impact. We also diverge into the concept of mining Asteroids for their mineral content as the…
Read More >