doug

About doug

Posts by Doug Green:

Never underestimate the importance of brand

Michael Holt, Managing Director, gardyneHOLT design Our country and our industry is based on a practical sense of getting things done, usually with little fuss or fanfare. However, times are changing and in particular we’re less reliant upon our domestic markets to offer sufficient demand, especially with our own markets wide open to competition from overseas. The message from government, now more than ever, is to develop our export markets and international revenue base. But have we properly developed the knack for self-promotion that we really need in order to compete vigorously. The essence of commodification is where two or more seemingly similar things are only really differentiated on price. Price competition is a common and often painful element in contract negotiations, leading to ongoing cost control. But it’s a tough way to make fair profits. Furthermore, why would anyone want to sell their product or service based primarily on price? There’ll always be others striving to be even cheaper, so price really is a fickle way of winning and maintaining sales. Competitive advantage must be woven into the products, service and ongoing relationship in order to maintain demand, differentiation and where possible, premium. For example, Hi-Q Components, a smart and reliable Kiwi business with a great reputation for supplying thousands of different small components to manufacturers (electrical components, bushes and bearings, caps, covers etc) realised that their brand is the first and best way to express their value. They started with the idea of supplying anything that can fit within a shoebox, and that’s still true today. Their brand should say that for them but the problem was that their brand didn’t say anything much at all. Our task was to add all the right qualities while keeping a connection to the original brand. In the process, we’ve created […]

Losing our direction

Click here to view article

CADCAM gives racing supplier power and precision

‘Power Through Precision’ is the company motto at MBE Cylinder Heads and Manifolds. MBE achieves both precision and power by using Delcam’s PowerSHAPE design software and its PowerMILL machining program. To see how, watch the Delcam TV video on https://www.delcam.tv/delcam-video.asp?VideoId=79. Founded in 1997 by Matt Bieneman, MBE is located in the heart of America’s racing country in Mooresville, North Carolina. Mr. Bienenman created a team of specialists hand-picked from the best in the industry and was equally particular about his selection of equipment and software. The resulting levels of quality and technical innovation have made MBE a trusted choice for leading race teams and engine builders throughout the United States, Australia and Canada. Customers include teams from dirt racing and drag racing, as well as competitors in tractor- and truck-pulling events. Just like the race cars, trucks and other custom vehicles he helps build, MBE’s head programmer Mark Olson says what makes the company’s Delcam products winners is their power. “It amazes me what the Delcam programs can do,” he admitted. “I’ve used a lot of programs in my career (which began in 1970) and this is the smartest software that I’ve ever used.” “We do a lot of manual work to develop the shape of the manifold,” explained Mr. Olson. “Once we are happy with the design, we digitize the ports, chambers and whatever else needs to be machined, and we import the data into PowerSHAPE.” “PowerSHAPE has a great, powerful surfacing engine,” said Mr. Olson. “I haven’t yet found anything as good as PowerSHAPE to manipulate surface data into exactly the shapes that I need.” After perfecting the model in PowerSHAPE, Mr. Olson moves his design easily and flawlessly into PowerMILL. The transparent interface between PowerMILL and PowerSHAPE is a big benefit. “You can cut and paste geometry […]

Environment drives quest for 21st Century storage technologies

The current debate about the best construction materials and technologies for big industrial and municipal liquid storage tanks is not new. Ever since lead in wine and water was blamed for contributing to madness and the decline of the Roman Empire, planners have been very careful about where they store and process both potable water and high purity liquids for human and industrial use. And while the ancient Romans may have contributed to their own downfall by consuming 1- 5 litres of wine a day, by many accounts, there is little doubt that lead did leach into their tipple as it was simmered slowly in the lead-lined pots or kettles of the time. Lead may also have polluted the water supply from pipes delivering it to and from the springs, rivers, aquaducts and castellum aquae, the central reservoir at the highest point of cities such as Pompeii. Skip forward a few thousand years and it is possible that, with today’s storage technologies, emperors such as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero and Claudius may have been much healthier individuals than those depicted by history (particularly in the case of Claudius) as suffering disturbed speech, weak limbs, slobbering and fits of excessive inappropriate laughter. Because big storage and industrial process tanks today are, by and large, light years ahead of the standards of even a couple of generations ago, in terms of hygiene for human consumption and cleanliness for high-tech industrial processes that demand utmost purity for storage of the liquids used in them. These very important industrial applications including zero discharge processes, which are vital to a host of major industries extending from mining, resources and energy to food and beverage manufacturing and the recycling of industrial waste to deliver biogas to help power the business and reduce its carbon footprint. The premier […]

Competitive Manufacturing Programs help manufacturers go Lean

According to www.stats.govt.nz approximately half of NZ manufacturers have less than 50 FTE employees and one in five manufacturers employ less than 10 people. These companies underpin the NZ economy but are they benefiting from Lean thinking? Owners and / or managers of SMEs who believe that their company has more potential than it is currently realising might benefit from undertaking a lean program. Lean thinking can be used to generate cost reductions, or gain improvements in lead time and delivery performance. Applying lean thinking might also highlight opportunities to reduce inventory in order to free cash and fuel further growth. However, for SMEs companies, “going lean’ can be particularly challenging and improvement efforts are often put on the back burner due to unresolved implementation questions such as: Will the tools be effective here? Will I get buy-in? Will the benefits exceed the costs So how does the smaller manufacturer get started on the continuous improvement journey? One route is to consider a government subsidised Public Program in Competitive Manufacturing. Public CM programs are typically aimed at individuals with organisational accountability for continuous performance improvement. These courses introduce best practice continuous improvement methodologies from the world’s leading organisations. The emphasis of a good quality CM program is on ‘learning by doing’ and knowledge sharing with other course participants and the assessment of learning is based around the implementation of workplace projects. On a public diploma level CM program the participant can expect to learn many technical aspects of a lean implementation including: How to map their own value stream and use this to identify wastes The importance of a balanced scorecard and application for their own company The ‘best practice’approach to reducing changeover times How to apply ‘Just In Time’ to their own workplace How to manage a 5S system […]