Industry News

Cook Medical Australia was founded in 1979 to manufacture and distribute medical products for customers in markets located around the Pacific Rim and South-East Asia. Originally focused on angiographic and interventional devices, Cook Medical Australia is at the forefront of the development of technology needed to perform in-vitro fertilisation and assisted reproduction procedures. Cook Medical Australia is the only manufacturing site in the world that produces custom-made stent grafts for the treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms. The Brisbane-based manufacturing facility is Cook Medical’s Asia-Pacific headquarters, employing over 500 people locally and over 1,200 across the Asia Pacific region with approximately 12,000 personnel globally. Recently Cook Medical undertook a project to improve processing efficiency, accuracy and repeatability and to ensure raw material components continued to meet the requirements for the finished medical devices. The goal was to automate the process for measurement of raw material and in process components. Without a new method, components would continue to be measured and checked by hand (using rulers, micrometers and…

In a metal cutting operation, a tool deforms workpiece material and causes it to shear away in the form of chips. The deformation process requires a significant amount of force, and the tool endures a variety of mechanical, thermal, chemical and tribological loads. Over a period of time, these loads eventually cause the tool to wear to the point that it must be replaced. Accordingly, for more than a century, scientists and engineers have created and tested mathematical models that factor in the forces upon a tool to provide estimates of expected tool life. Many of these models focus on a specific tool’s performance in a certain material and operation, and simple formulas and repetitive testing produce valid tool wear projections. However, generalised models that can be applied across a wide range of workpiece materials and tools are more useful in industrial applications. Because these models take into account a variety…

When the term ‘automation’ is mentioned, many people first think of robots, drones, and machinery becoming self-aware and taking over the plant – and the world. This is one of the greatest misconceptions associated with these modern technologies. Rather, a range of automation tools are available, which can streamline tasks, predict outcomes, suggest best practices, initiate action, monitor progress, and alert managers when there is an incident that demands attention. While there are many, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions are one of the most basic forms of automation. These modern solutions streamline processes by directly rerouting incidents to the relevant department using event and workflow management. They are also able to automatically issue standard communications such as a daily inventory reports or shop floor schedules, to the right people at designated times. Other built-in automation tactics…

Medical manufacturing is an innovative sector that continues to show positive growth against the backdrop of a turbulent global market. While some questions remain on the future of the Australian manufacturing industry due to recent high-profile changes in the market, evidence shows that innovative manufacturers are taking advantage of the opportunities in international markets and growing their businesses. Against this uncertain future, BJP Laboratories has experienced significant growth by exporting its products to new markets. The company specialises in manufacturing and packaging organic and non-organic complementary medicinal products, such as tablets and capsules. Among its extensive range of products, BJP specialises in the production of probiotics, which it undertakes in its purpose-built, humidity-controlled facility located in Yatala, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. BJP has experienced exponential business growth as a result of increasing demand for listed medicines in overseas markets. On the back of this success, one of its existing clients, Blackmores, required increased production capacity to meet the growing demand for glucosamine tablets…

Tieman is a family-owned business that has been operating for more than 60 years, designing and manufacturing bulk road tankers in Campbellfield in Victoria. After a major restructure, the company decided to focus its business on one core product, the road transport tanker manufacture business. While Tieman had operated its own internal network and IT department for years, Brennan IT had been working with the company as a strategic managed services provider. When the time came for the upgrade, Tieman asked Brennan IT to create an end-to-end managed infrastructure solution that would streamline its IT and take the business into the cloud. “With this new direction we needed an effective IT system that would take the company forward with our new vision,” said Barry Grieg, COO from Tieman Tankers. “The current system didn’t match with our new business model so we decided to undertake the journey to update our systems. “When we turned our attention to our IT systems we found we had a number of legacy issues to deal with. Over…

Established in the 2014 restructuring of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), Airbus Defence and Space is responsible for the areas of defence and space as a subsidiary of the Airbus Group. With headquarters in Ottobrunn, Germany, the company focuses on the development and construction of engines for the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, among other activities. Airbus Defence and Space meets the high demands on quality with long-standing experience in machining and state-of-the-art CNC technology. Among its recent acquisitions are two DMU 70 eVo linear machines and one DMC 125 FD duoBLOCK. The company also uses the DMG MORI machines in an exact 1:1 simulation on the PC, in the form of the DMG MORI Virtual Machine. The software can be used in a preliminary PC simulation to safely check the complex machining of the highly expensive workpieces. This makes manufacturing completely safe and enables process optimisations already at a preliminary stage to increase efficiency in machining. A fully loaded Airbus A380, at a weight of approximately 590 tons, launches…

The tour took in CSL Behring’s state-of-the-art production line, where the company develops and manufactures a range of plasma protein biotherapies. It was accompanied by a detailed explanation of the processes used to make CSL Behring’s products, as well as the rigorous quality controls to which the company must adhere. Also in attendance was Frank McGuire MP, Local Member for Broadmeadows and Parliamentary Secretary for Medical Research. CSL Behring is a global leader in therapies derived from human plasma. More than 700 employees work at the company’s purpose-built advanced manufacturing facility in Broadmeadows. CSL Behring manufactures 15 plasma products from blood donors in Australia and the Asia Pacific. The company’s products help treat and prevent a range of human medical conditions, and are exported worldwide. In December 2015, a five-year construction and development project at Broadmeadows culminated with the first shipment of a state-of-the-art, highly engineered immunoglobulin product ‘Privigen’, exported to patients in the US. CSL Behring is a subsidiary of CSL Limited, an ASX…

Market conditions in Australia are changing, though at the core of it all, Australian companies are amongst the most innovative and resourceful in the world. At Applied Machinery, we began seeing signs of renewed optimism from our customers towards the back end of 2015, and it’s with this in mind that the following Top 10 will be where our customers are, and will be continuing to invest their capital. Pro-Plas CNC plasma cutting systems                                                                                                                             With the Pro-Plas series plasma cutting systems from Applied Machinery, we have managed to put together a quality CNC machine, with Hypertherm plasma source and Fastcam software for under $27,000 plus GST. With an edge finish that has to be seen to be believed for a system at this price point, in-house sheet-metal profiling just became accessible to companies where in the past it was just not financially viable. We saw record sales of these machines prior to Christmas 2015 and orders in early…

Dr Mia Woodruff’s exciting vision of ‘hospitals of the future’ is for every Australian hospital to have 3D printers sitting beside its imaging equipment. She also sees a future where patient’s cells will be stored at hospitals, early in the patient’s life, until the cells are needed to custom-make sterile on-the-spot implants. These implants can take the form of bones, organs, cartilage, blood vessels, breast implants and multiple tissues. As Associate Professor and Group Leader of Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) Biofabrication and Tissue Morphology Group in Brisbane, Woodruff and her team are working together to achieve this vision by researching the high-tech sciences of tissue engineering and biofabrication. She explains that biofabrication is the production of organs and tissues using 3D printing to address health challenges in medicine. In a 2014 TEDxQUT video, “Absolutely Biofabulous”, Woodruff explained how fabrication of patient-specific replacement tissue and organs is safe, cost-effective and routine: “3D printing is used to build complete houses in China and create clothing for Paris catwalks. So…

According to ‘The Voice of Australian Business’, a bi-annual survey of SMEs across all industries and regions by accounting firm Bentleys, businesses were evenly divided with respect to seeing digital disruption as a threat or opportunity – 25% saw it as an opportunity and 29% as a threat. Michael Ruggiero, Managing Partner at Bentleys SA, said the split could signal a lack of understanding around how to embrace these technologies in a practical way, causing a reluctance to engage. “We are seeing that SMEs that are proactively embracing digital technologies, particularly in the manufacturing and agribusiness sectors, are reaping the opportunities in how it can effectively improve or even change their business model and operations completely,” said Ruggiero. “However, according to our research, that is only a quarter of businesses. Given the rate of development of digital technologies, it’s somewhat surprising this figure isn’t higher. “The ones who are seeing it as threat are worried it will disrupt their traditional way of approaching their business – essentially upsetting…

In some cases, operations may seem impossible to perform, but as such they also provide a potential for being transformed to processes that are efficient and secure. This potential has been the driving force behind the development of vibration-dampened tooling – from initially being a problem solver to today’s position as a recognised productivity booster. Research into the causes and possible remedies of vibration tendencies was started as early as in the 1960s. With vibrations having been a problem in machining as long as cutting metal has existed, a closer look was warranted into the nature of the problem, originating at the cutting edge – especially when related to tool overhang. It was established that a vibration could be seen as a variable deflection of the cutting tool and that with no or minute deflection there was no vibration that would affect machining to any consequence. In cutting tools, vibrations are triggered and maintained by dynamic cutting forces. Even during continuous cuts, forces…

The report tracked the positive impact of the lower dollar on Australian businesses and manufacturers in particular. It found that the lower dollar is clearly helping Australian economic growth transition away from its reliance on mining-related resources investment and output growth, towards a pattern of growth that is spread more evenly across sectors and geographies. Drawing on responses from the CEOs of 248 businesses across Australia, the new report – Business Responses to the Australian Dollar –sees the sustained lower Australian dollar together with greater trade opportunities as having long-term and overall positive impacts on Australian-based manufacturing and services businesses. At the same time, however, the lower dollar is causing increases in some key inputs, with many businesses finding it hard to pass on these cost increases amid intense competition and a generally weak consumer inflation environment that makes it harder to justify price increases. The widespread use of imported inputs means that this is tightening margins…

Complementary to this, the Australian Industry Group announced that the manufacturing sector recorded its longest period of growth since 2006. And over a 10-year period, our exports have grown by 40% despite long cycles of currency fluctuations. Our defence industry is gearing up to build the next fleet of submarines, offshore patrol vessels and frigates. This in itself presents enormous opportunities to showcase and nurture our world-class, yet way too thin layer of advanced manufacturing capabilities. While we can cheer and welcome this current focus and opportunity, we should keep a steady eye on our future. Our achievements to date show what we can do, but do not necessarily show what we must do tomorrow and how. Fortunately, the political debate has moved on from the question of whether we should have manufacturing in the first place. However, what is not being sufficiently debated is what type of manufacturing…