The pulse of manufacturing technology

In an opportunity to take the pulse of the industry and refine AMTIL’s strategic planning, AMTIL has conducted policy roundtables across Australia. We were delighted to have hosted ~15% of the C-suite AMTIL membership using the boardroom table format, and members provided valuable insight into their lived experience and brought forward their top issues for discussion. Five roundtables were conducted, one in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, supported by William Buck.

The top three issues—skills shortages, safety, and climate reporting—have been woven into the new AMTIL Strategic Plan 2024 – 2026 (The Plan). Based on this important information, AMTIL has set a new work plan for the New Year, which will include a few new offerings.

AMTIL’s principle activities, to promote and support the manufacturing technology industry in Australia are to: provide industry resources, services and platforms, and proactively and reactively advocate to governments on policies relating to the manufacturing technology industry.

While our vision and mission remain steadfast, The Plan identifies strategies that will enable us to provide a unique value proposition to our members and to support development of the broader industry. These strategies will build our service offering, maximise value and ensure long-term sustainability for the industry and the organisation.

Vision: AMTIL’s vision is to be the leading industry body advancing manufacturing technology in Australia.

Mission:  AMTIL’s mission is to foster a strong and sustainable manufacturing technology ecosystem in Australia through representation, advocacy and the provision of resources and services to its members and industry.

The face of manufacturing in our nation has fundamentally changed over the past decade, driven by developments in technology (especially robotics and digitalisation), the pandemic revealing our lack of sovereign capability, and ‘whole of industry’ structural reform evolving to allow us to remain globally competitive and specialise as a high tech, high quality, low quantity jurisdiction, as opposed to commoditised industry, with costs being pushed down. It is now being ‘pulled’ by the transition to net zero and decarbonisation and a push towards safer workplaces.

Industry resources are a bedrock for an industry organisation. It is well-documented and anecdotally shrill that the industry’s lack of skills and talent is holding it back.

Skills Summit

AMTIL will hold an inaugural Skills Summit in Canberra in June. Scoping has commenced, and this is envisaged to be a workshop that brings together like-minded industry organisations to develop a plan to ‘move the dial’ via collaboration, information sharing, and alignment of efforts in the same direction.

Safety

Equally, workplace (and machine) safety was the most often raised issue in membership discussions and the top three roundtable topics.

AMTIL will approach this issue by promoting safety in manufacturing in three ways: Lead by example, with new provisions for exhibiting at Australia Manufacturing Week; Develop and deliver a roadshow of educational events around the country with key experts; and the development of resources for employers to share with their Team.

Climate reporting

With global community sentiment, new policy opportunities and regulatory changes all pushing toward net zero, ESG reporting and sustainability – as well as mandatory reporting for large companies imminent – all organisations with a view to the future are asking how they should approach such a complex topic. This is especially so for the heartland of today’s manufacturing sector, who are SMEs. These companies lack internal resources to investigate and deliver reporting but are being asked more and more to provide it.

AMTIL will kick off the year with a round of ‘climate reporting roundtables’ in February and later in the year, commence development of support resources on sustainability reporting.