By CASEY NEILL
Adaptive thinking, creativity and co-operation will be key traits in the future of manufacturing.
Embracing a willingness to fail was also among the advice to emerge from the Skills of the Future session at the Smart Manufacturing ’16 symposia at the Drum Theatre on Tuesday 17 May.
At a cocktail reception that evening, Committee for Dandenong chairman Gary Castricum said the day-long event in central Dandenong “was all about trying to change perceptions”.
“It’s about recognising what we have in the south-east and supporting it,” he said.
Industry Minister Lily D’Ambrosio told the function that Victoria was leading the way in the country’s expanding manufacturing sector.
Guest speaker, entrepreneur Georgia Beattie, shared her manufacturing story. She came up with a single-serve disposable wine glass company and now exports the Dandenong-made product.
Chisholm’s industry engagement manager Simon Upton moderated the Skills of the Future session.
Sharing their experiences were Hilton Manufacturing’s managing director Todd Hartley and HR manager Anthony Di Battista, Bombardier Transportation Australia managing director Rene Lalande, and Centre of Australian Foresight strategic futurist Marcus Barber.
Mr Hartley said the Dandenong South sheet metal company’s strategic plans used to span three, five and 10 years.
“The industry is moving so fast,” he said.
He said Hilton recently signed a new deal with Kenworth that required it to drop its price by 3 per cent per year over the next three years.
“It can’t just come off our bottom line,” he said.
“We have to work out how to reduce our costs year on year when electricity and labour are becoming more expensive.
“We’ve got to do it through different skills.”
Mr Hartley said he’d need more adaptive thinkers and creativity as automation increased.
“We need to get that top 10 per cent involved in manufacturing,” he said.
Mr Lalande said that more than one third of the energy spent developing a new train was in software development.
He said trains still had a wide mechanical and electronic base but they were becoming ever more complex.
“You can no longer be only a welder,” he said.
Mr Barber said collaboration was no good without co-operation, and that all innovation was creative but not all creativity was innovative.
“You need to make something redundant for it to be innovative … not just make incremental improvements,” he said.
He also stressed encouraging a willingness to “fail intelligently” and learn something along the way – or “die instead”.
