Industry News

Over more than two centuries of machining history, the elements of production economics have multiplied in number. Manufacturing first evolved from craft-level single-item output to mass production of standardised parts using machine tools. Improving manufacturing methods brought about a second generation of mass production featuring production lines and output of increasingly greater numbers of identical parts: a high-volume, low-product mix (HVLM) scenario. Then CNC machines and robots fostered a third generation of mass production efficiency. Most recently, digital technology applied in programming, machine tool controls and workpiece handling systems is facilitating a fourth generation of manufacturing production, known as Industry 4.0, that enables cost-efficient, high-mix, low-volume (HMLV) production. To effectively accomplish the shift from HVLM to…

Axiom Precision Manufacturing began in 1979 as Diemould Tooling and was an OEM manufacturer for the automotive industry. However, as Australia’s automotive industry started to wind down towards closure about five years ago, Axiom was already on the path to a diversification that is now helping it thrive again. “A lot of businesses probably threw their hands into the air and blamed others but Axiom actually said ‘It’s happening so what are we going to do about it?’” says Business Development Manager Peter Howard. “They identified where they thought the market was going and it looks they made a pretty good call.” That direction has been spearheaded by defence, aerospace and medical devices, with Axiom completing work for numerous defence primes including ASC, Raytheon Australia and BAE. The workforce has grown to about 60 at its Wingfield base, and Howard expects this number to swell further in the next couple of years. “Everything that finished when Ford, Toyota and Holden closed, we’ve been able…

Fujitsu surveyed more than 1,500 C-suite executives in large and mid-sized companies in 16 countries. Of the manufacturing companies surveyed, 69% said they had already initiated digital transformation programs. While these programs tended to focus on efficiencies, manufacturers are starting to realise that there is much to gain from sectors that are further along their transformation journeys. For example, when disruptors hit the finance sector, financial services providers started with innovations aimed at optimisation and driving down costs, which quickly evolved into offering alternative products and services. Transforming the value chain resulted in new opportunities for expansion, development, and growth. For 40% of manufacturers, the focus remains on achieving efficiency improvements. Using emerging technologies, they’re identifying optimisation opportunities to avoid disruption…

At Nissan, we have been manufacturing parts in south-east Melbourne for more than 35 years. While Australia’s automotive manufacturing industry has taken a battering in recent times, it is a source of enormous pride that we continue to manufacture parts locally for vehicles that wind up on Australian roads and on motorways all over the world. The parts we produce in our Nissan Casting Plant (NCAP) are carefully manufactured by a team of 192 highly skilled workers, spread across three shifts per day, seven days a week. This concentration of skill and experience results in approximately 2.6 million die-cast aluminium parts and over 16,000 tow bars annually, with an export value of $82.5m. We have experts in high and low-pressure die casting, precision machining, component assembly and accessories manufacturing, and we currently create 60 different parts specific to oil pans, gearbox and final-drive housing, as well as parts for electric vehicles, including the Inverter Water Jacket and Stator Housing.…

The new machine is a Kingfisher RAL12 CNC vertical lathe by Radar Industrial, a Taiwanese manufacturer of high-precision machine tools. The vertical spindle is supported to a full 360 degrees, eliminating ‘spindle droop’ and increasing the maximum weight allowable on the spindle. As Isaac Newton would have noticed, gravity provides a downward force on the workpiece, assisting the workholding. Minimal clamp force can be applied where desirable, and gravity keeps each part in the chuck. This not only provides additional stability, especially when machining delicate parts, but also dissipates the cutting forces created by heavy cutting. Increasing capability These facts were in the thoughts of the management team at Meeke Engineering as they considered the needs of their current and prospective customers. The team was seeking to add more capability and capacity to the company’s workshops by installing a new machining centre. They worked together with the engineers at 600 Machine Tools to identify they right machine for the envisaged…

Led by AMTIL and generously supported by the Victorian Government, the AM Hub has been established to grow and develop additive manufacturing (AM) capability. Its goals are to: promote and market AM capabilities; support the creation of high-quality AM jobs; provide a forum for dialogue and communication for the AM industry; encourage R&D, innovation and collaboration; and provide a strong, cohesive voice on AM sector development. John is uniquely well placed to oversee the direction of the AM Hub, having been at the forefront of the adoption of AM technology in Australia for more than two decades. In the early 1990s he launched Interact Plastic Services, the first private company in this country to move into AM, having purchased a Stratasys FDM 2000 3D printer. For John, part of the appeal of his new role with AMTIL has been the opportunity to re-engage with AM and…

Chrome-plated decorative panels with 3D lettering in two different matt finishes that also glow in different colors at night have only been available in series production from a German OEM for a few weeks. The changing day-night design – the haptics above the 3D lettering by day, the illuminated color selected by the driver at night – is an eyecatching feature, at a time when customisable interior ambience is currently a trend among OEMs. Dr Carsten Brockmann, KTB’s Managing Director, is enthusiastic about the new design: “This greatly increases the value of the interior design. This day-night design also allows further customisation of the car’s interior. The panel’s surface and contour lighting gives us a new design element that appeals to the senses.” Using a multi-component injection moulding process, KTB manufactures components of polycarbonate (PC) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and finishes them in…

Noise exposure is also Australia’s most common preventable cause of occupational hearing loss, with Worksafe Australia estimating that a million employees in this country may be exposed to hazardous levels of noise at work. Damage to hearing can occur when noise levels are higher than 85 decibels, which is about the loudness of heavy traffic. “One highly effective way in which the noise problem can be addressed at its root cause (rather than through hearing protective devices, valuable though they are) is in the substitution of engineering plastics in application areas where quiet running, low weight and low friction are advantageous,” says Pat Flood, NSW Manager for engineering plastics specialists Cut To Size. Flood has more than 30 years’ experience in tailoring light, tough and quiet industrial engineering plastics to individual application needs. He says one of the most versatile materials increasingly substituting for more expensive metals is Wearlon.…

The question businesses need to ask is whether they are ready for digital transformation, and whether they’ll find themselves forging ahead, or falling behind? It’s time discuss how manufacturers can better prepare themselves for Industry 4.0 and take that all important step of digitising their manufacturing facilities. Kevin Dherman, SYSPRO’s Chief Innovation Officer, believes the best way to prepare your business for Industry 4.0 is to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that can pave the way for digitisation by providing real, working solutions that will enable manufacturers and distributors to leverage on new technologies and trends that are shaping and redefining the competitive landscape. For this reason the SYSPRO team has worked hard to ensure that they have embedded the most pragmatic and useful features and functionality of Industry 4.0 into their latest ERP release.…

AMT: Firstly tell us about the UTS Tech Lab facility Ray Kirby: UTS Tech Lab is an entirely new facility in Botany in Sydney that we built to focus on research and to bring companies to work with us on research in this space. It will house post-graduate students mostly, post-doctoral students and PhD students, and it will also be a place for academics to come and work on their research and work on collaborative projects with companies. The place was formally finished in September. UTS has spent $60m on this facility; that includes the fit-out as well as the new equipment that we’ve put in. What we tried to do is put in equipment that is as high-tech and as state-of-the-art as we can in particular areas, and then we’ve drawn together the different sides of engineering and technology. For example we’re bringing together the civil engineers and mechanical engineers, we’re bringing them together with computer scientists and electrical engineers, so…

The size of the Australian continent, its geographically dispersed population base and the importance of major commodities to its economic output means that freight transport sector performance has a significant influence on national productivity and efficiency. Figures surrounding the industry are significant. Trucking handles more cargo than trains, ships or planes, carrying more than 2,100 million tons. Moreover, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics the trucking industry is worth over $40bn and employs 140,00 Australians. Trucks are an essential part of our economy. Without trucks, goods would never get from suppliers to manufacturers and into the hands of consumers. Just as the economy depends on the trucking industry, the trucking industry depends on high-quality equipment. Kenworth Australia has built a reputation around superior-quality, custom-engineered trucks with proven reliability over 47 years of local manufacturing. It manufactures around 2,200 trucks every year for delivery, and has the largest amount of 2015 models on the market. So, when Kenworth was faced with a late design change that threatened the production timeline of…

I found myself sitting down to talk to Jacob Harpaz in the cafeteria at Iscar’s head office in Tefen, Israel. Chatting with Harpaz, you would never think you were talking to a man responsible for more than 12,000 employees in 140 subsidiaries and 61 countries. He’s perfectly pleasant and charismatic, with achievements to his name few in Israel can match; yet he isn’t a spotlight-seeker. Nevertheless, he has shaped his company like no other since joining in 1972, 20 years after its foundation by Stef Wertheimer, who had the foresight and vision to challenge an established industry. Iscar’s humble beginnings in an old shack in Nahariya, Israel, along with intense, hard work and commitment to continued innovation, have led Iscar to become an industry leader today. Since 1982, Harpaz and Wertheimer’s son, Eitan Wertheimer, have run the company from one of the most rural and remote corners of the country, far from the commercial capital Tel Aviv. Harpaz’s office offers a commanding view…

Elmass founder Martin Forrer had to write a business plan for his final MBA capstone unit. He needed to find a market niche and formulate a business strategy, defining the resources, the nature of the business, as well as financial and organisational matters. Having studied engineering in Germany, it goes without saying the business plan was written for a company that matched Martin’s technical background. Martin understood that to be successful, a balance had to be found between financial, competitive and human resources aspects of the business. Research had shown that a contract broaching service could be successful if the elmass technology, a highly efficient broaching process hardly known in Australia, was used. After graduating, Forrer took the business plan to local banks, but s the concept was ahead of its time, no bank was prepared to  finance the start up. Determined to establish his contract broaching service, Martin contacted Elmass…