2015 was another year in which the manufacturing industry faced some difficulty. I say this a lot to our staff but it is important that we understand that during difficult times it is up to us to help our members as much as possible – not for them to help us. This is an ongoing dilemma for us because most of the assistance we can offer is through marketing, promotion, exposure, networking and education and all of these things cost money, so we do require our members to invest with us in order to get benefits.
This past year the Board and our senior staff reconfirmed our role is to represent and promote the interests of manufacturing technology suppliers and their customers (the ecosystem).
For our Manufacturing Technology Suppliers, our focus is on encouraging investment in technology. We do this through marketing and promotional opportunities, whether it be Austech, our AMT magazine, online offerings, talking to government about incentive schemes and other services. We want people buying machine tools, automation, robotics, software, cutting tools and ancillary equipment. We need to focus heavily on this area.
For our Manufacturing Technology Users, our focus is on providing business opportunities, networking and capability building. We do this through identifying job opportunities and how to tap into them, looking at local supply chains, promoting our members’ capabilities through ManufactureLink, bringing people together through a number of our events around Australia or helping companies identify where their improvement can come from. We want people getting work, educating themselves and building their businesses.
We ran Austech in Melbourne in May and it was a resounding success with exhibitors commenting that the quality and quantity of visitors was better than they expected. We just need to translate that into investment and everybody will be even happier. One of the new initiatives at Austech was our co-location with the 3D Printing Conference. This worked very well with our expanded Additive and Digital Manufacturing Pavilion and this was certainly a very popular area of the show this year. We again ran the Manufacturers’ Pavilion, a special focus on manufacturers’ capabilities which included a high profile speaker program on the floor of the exhibition. We were also buoyed by the feedback from visitors to the show and are already looking forward to running another strong event in May 2017.
We continued to work hard to produce a high quality industry publication that gave plenty of good news stories and industry information to our readers. We have recently made the decision to make some significant changes to the frequency and size of our magazine, so from February 2016 you will see the AMT magazine expanded to a 120 page bi-monthly issue. We are excited with the opportunity to showcase even more great companies in our industry that are putting Australian manufacturing on the global stage. I would like to thank our members that have supported our magazine over the past year. We are very proud of the regular feedback we receive which iterates AMT is highly regarded and respected in the industry.
We started our regular Hotspot communication with members. This is our way of passing on anything that comes across our desks that we feel is of interest to members, whether it be opportunities for work, networking functions, information on running a business, funding prospects from Government or specific industry information, the Hotspots have been well received by members.
In May, we were reappointed as a Partner Organisation for the Entrepreneurs’ Programme (EP). Our role essentially hasn’t
changed from our work under the previous Enterprise Connect program. That is, giving business advice and facilitating connections with research institutes. This is a major activity for us and one we intend to be even more involved with in future.
We have been working with both the Innovative Manufacturing CRC and the Advanced Manufacturing Growth Centre as they establish themselves and we are looking forward to having an intricate involvement with both these bodies in the coming year. The work we have been doing in this area has brought us closer to other industry groups and government departments and this is certainly an advantage to us as we seek to address the industry issues facing our membership. This will be a core focus for us over the coming years.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our members that have been involved in our activities over the past 12 months. Your input is valued highly. I would also like to thank the Board and Directors of AMTIL, who have given such good guidance and support to the Institute over a long period of time. The past year few years have been difficult for our members and we have certainly not been immune ourselves but it has also resulted in us having more clarity than ever before on the direction we should take.
To all our readers, have a merry festive season and happy new year. Like many of you, I look forward to 2016 with great anticipation.