It’s happening right now! Australian Manufacturing Week rumbles into action at Darling Harbour.

Here we are.  In bright Sydney sunshine, Australian Manufacturing Week has begun down at the ICC at Darling Harbour. Hats off to all the crew who pushed in over the weekend and made the starting day such a success. That is a mighty job. The stands are thumping out great vibes, every last one.  Great waves of visitors buzzed the stands throughout the first day, starting at opening, quieting down just around midday and powering back up again in the afternoon.

Gavin New, General Manager of Ronson Gears, showed me through the range of wheels, fitted cogs and spiral screws that the company produced. From the smallest order of spare parts for old machines, in whatever medium, to mass production of assembly line gears. I’ll go back there again.

On the ADDE stand, I was taken by Barry Higgins on a very novel trip using VR. Activating cobots, moving pallets of stock around in an automated sensing environment. They appeared out in the aisles as well, among the people. Back in the real world, they also had a display of world’s smallest, compact and precise industrial robot, well worth a look.

And what the HMS Group of companies, itching to show off the cylinder balanced tool holder, able to control, move and edge tools up to 60kgs heavy, working in the mines, a regular worker can push around drills and guns required in the job when previously, all that grunt work was done manually.

I met John Lawson, the BDM from DonoBrace, full of momentum and plans for the construction of pylon and braces for all kinds of roofing and bridgework.  This new bracing system was invented by DonoBrace and is on display here at the show. It saves on steel use. How? The load is taken by the Brace, and there doesn’t need to be as much steel used in the pylon.  500mpa instead of 830mpa. They’re working with Monash University, they’re helping with certification on their carbon saving. Green steel is where they’re coming from. There’s so much more to this, and DonoBrace is worth looking up.

I spoke with Ray Keefe, Managing Director of Successful Endeavours. His attitude spoke volumes of what is needed in this formative year of change. He told me of an old Greek saying: ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’  “If we can help Australian manufacturing, the whole industry benefits,” he said. “I think we just had a decade where the government just didn’t get it.  The new crowd need to focus on bringing manufacturing back home.”

At the Epicor stand, the company demonstrated their logistics software in quite a unique way.  Instead of watching the screen at the batch of jobs pushing through their processes, (which is fine and good), but how about a slot car race?  For the purposes of entertainment of course, visitors can see how the jobs pile up, and turn corners, in a completely different way at AMW.

Also, MYOB has a cash grab activation on their stand where visitors can win prizes and they also have live demos happening at 12, 2pm and 4pm Plus, when you attend any of our live demos, you’ll have the chance to enter the CashCube where you could win a GiftPay voucher worth up to $500!

The networking drinks, the happy hour gathering at the end of the first day sponsored by Autodesk, was a great wind down for the attendees, visitors and exhibitors, after such a long time between shows it was a tremendous way to recalibrate.

Tomorrow is going to be … even bigger.

 

australianmanufacturingweek.com.au