The Daily News

Ideas can come from everywhere

-Gemma Stanbridge, ViAGO International Limited Are the managers in your company empowering employees to pursue their broader passions, skills, and experience? Or are they pigeon-holing employees into a box defined by their current job title, taking them at face value of their job title, and restricting further development? These latter rigid typecasting behaviours serve only to limit employees from reaching their full potential and they discourage initiative and innovation within a company. An artificial limit is imposed on the value an employee can provide because the additional strengths or skills the employee has which are not required for the specific position are overlooked. Jack Stack, author of The Great Game of Business, shares in his introduction to the new edition, a story of a company he worked for where a drill press operator was actually a self-made millionaire who had built his wealth through real estate investments. “Here was this incredible entrepreneur working under our noses and all I had this guy doing was drilling holes. What a wasted opportunity.” Stack and the company failed to use the drill press operator’s full range of talents, asking the operator to only think about drilling the perfect hole, not about how they could build a better company. Why did this happen, and why does this still happen today, over 20 years later? Managers or recruiters look for and hire people to do a specific job or position that needs to be filled. Upon employment, the employee is labelled with their specific job title and job description. Managers (and even other employees) are often blinded by job titles, only giving each employee as much information as they feel is needed for their respective job title. Typically, operational and strategic decisions are handled by the appropriate higher managerial function and so many employees are […]

Real Steel motivated staff drive success

A Lower Hutt manufacturing business, Real Steel, is a finalist in the Humankind 2019 Workplace Awards. What is interesting about Real Steel is that the business has maintained high employee satisfaction through a period of rapid growth, while also introducing automation. Growing up in Upper Hutt The company, a family run business, has seen thirty per cent growth year on year and tripled its head count to 70, hiring 30 new staff last year alone. The manufacturing business imports steel out of Sweden to make steel parts for road transport, forestry, and recycling industries. With clients nationwide, the company produces a lot of its work for the Waikato area such as steel for building truck trailers, wear parts, and materials for processing machines. Real Steel staff mostly live in Lower and Upper Hutt, with the 17-year-old company based out of Railway Ave for the last 10 years where it expanded its factory last year due to growth. It is owned by Managing Director Luke Mathieson. “It’s a great place to run a business, there is a lot of manufacturing history out here and a good work force,” says Mathieson. A Great Place to Work Mathieson believes the company’s people determine ultimately whether they succeed or fail in business. “It comes down to the quality of our team, it doesn’t matter how good our machinery is, how good our product is, if you don’t have the people to make it all happen, you are never going to make it happen.” Real Steel offers a flat structure and makes sure its managers are living and breathing company values. They also have a number of staff benefits that saw them named finalists in the award. These staff benefits include health insurance, free gym memberships and support with time off if staff want […]

EMA embraces historical 24 hours for NZ trade

The EMA embraces the historical 24 hours in which a deal has been struck on an upgrade to our free trade agreement with China, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement signed by all but India. Chief Executive Brett O’Riley says these agreements together will bring a boost to exporters and consequently the New Zealand economy. “Many of our members who are exporters will welcome the ability to reach larger economies across the other side of the world more easily, and the reduced tariffs and clear trading arrangements these two agreements bring will makes this much simpler,” he says. Key outcomes of the upgraded China free trade agreement include preferential treatment for many wood and paper products, less compliance costs for all exports and the highest level of commitment to environmental standards China has made in any FTA. New Zealand exports to China have tripled since 2008 when the original free trade agreement was signed. And while RCEP covers trade among New Zealand 14 other Asia-Pacific countries, it still excludes India, a market that Mr O’Riley is hopeful will eventually join. “India is an increasingly important market to New Zealand, where clearly there are close links with the large Indian population and number of businesses here. India’s huge population and growing middle class means our high-quality products will be in demand, and consistent rules across 15 countries would make it much simpler for our exporters,” says Mr O’Riley. “At a time when free trade is being challenged globally, it’s great to see these two agreements signed that plug New Zealand into the fastest growing economies in the world.”

Experienced academic to lead key faculties at Victoria University

Victoria University of Wellington has appointed Professor Ehsan Mesbahi as its new Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Faculties of Science, Engineering, Architecture and Design. Professor Mesbahi has more than 26 years’ experience in the higher education sectors in Europe and Asia, with the last 10 of those spent in senior and executive roles. Much of his academic career has been at Newcastle University—a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities in the United Kingdom and one of the original ‘red brick’ universities with a long history of civic engagement and social purpose. He was the founding Chief Executive Officer at Newcastle University’s Science, Agriculture and Engineering campus in Singapore, where he led the campus through a period of exponential growth in student numbers and research activities. His current role is Vice Principal and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at the University of West Scotland in Glasgow, where he has gained valuable experience in a young and teaching-oriented university. Professor Mesbahi’s research interests are multi-disciplinary and applied and have expanded from modelling, control, design and optimisation of engineering systems early in his career to environmental management and, most recently, informatics and application of artificial intelligence in data-mining/clustering. During his academic career he has been the project lead (or co-lead) in over 25 national and international research projects generating research income of more than £10million and turnover of academic enterprise activities of more than £50million. Professor Mesbahi will join the University in 2020.

Automating one step at a time

Rockwell Automation’s new regional director, Anthony Wong is very engaging. He has an easy laugh, but a serious undertone that lets you know he is here to do business. Recently appointed as regional director of automation giant Rockwell Automation, Wong has big shoes to fill in departing MD Scott Wooldridge. Not that he’ll have to look far if he needs the odd bit of advice – Wooldridge is now the company’s regional vice-president for Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. Wong, an electrical engineering major, brings experience from both the software and hardware streams of automation. With more than 24 years in the industry, he started out as customer support with Citect, before graduating to sales engineer, then account manager through to sales director. In 2006, Schneider Electric purchased Citect, which opened new opportunities to Wong, including a five-year sojourn at the company’s headquarters in Paris, France, where he had several roles mainly in the strategy, merger and integration sectors. Just under three years ago, he decided to come home where he worked for Schneider until taking up the Rockwell Automation position in July this year. As well as the usual challenges of the role, there are several other reasons the new job was attractive to Wong. “What attracted to me to the role is that Rockwell Automation is one of the most respected companies in the automation space,” he said. “I have always been in the industrial automation space, and with Rockwell Automation being purely a player in that space, that was definitely one of the things that attracted me to join the company. He said another reason was that Rockwell Automation has moved into addressing the digital space. For him that was signalled when the company took an 8.4 per cent stake in Internet of Things […]

Building a future-ready and sustainable strategy for manufacturing

By Mac Ghani, Managing Director, Avanade Australia From digital transformation to climate change, every industry is trying to keep up with the pace of change and reinvent processes for a more sustainable future. When a manufacturing business successfully transforms itself, customers and employees will benefit from: Increased efficiency and output through data-driven process optimisation and visibility; Reduced downtime and increased asset utilisation through real-time monitoring of assets and predictive maintenance analytics; Increased agility of supply-chain planning via real-time visibility and process controls; Improved worker safety and injury prevention by detecting and responding to changes in field conditions and worker vital signals; A future-ready manufacturing business also has the capacity to create a positive environmental impact – using digital innovation, data and insights to drive efficiencies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enable smarter energy management and reduce waste. The MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) finds companies that substantially complete their transformation tend to enjoy margins 16 percentage points higher than their industry’s average. A new beginning Despite awareness about the need to innovate and the commitment to invest heavily in technology over the next three years, research found the manufacturing industry continues to lag behind companies in other industries. With tougher socio-economic and environmental conditions, personalisation and a dynamic workforce, it can be incredibly difficult to understand where to start or how to progress further. In fact, 60-70 percent of organisations are still on their journey. Manufacturing is a traditionally siloed industry. But a future-ready organisation gives due consideration for impacts across the business, so open communication and evaluation throughout the process is key. Digital transformation belongs to the whole organisation, not just the CIO. Key decision-makers from all parts of the organisation need to put forward priorities of each business division. These priorities need to be aligned […]

New equity deal announced for industry automation specialist

CR Automation managing director Peter Jenkins. An award-winning industry automation specialist is set to significantly extend its market reach thanks to a new equity partnership with a horticultural heavyweight. Following recent collaboration on a number of projects, CR Automation (CRA) has decided to sell a 50 per cent equity stake to Jenkins Group – a key industry player throughout Australasia’s horticulture post-harvest industry. With subsidiaries in New Zealand and Australia (Tauranga-based Jenkins Freshpac Systems Ltd and NSW-based J-Tech Systems PTY), Jenkins Group provides an extensive range of labelling, packaging and handling systems to the fruit and vegetable industry across both countries. Hawke’s Bay-based CR Automation provides automation, robotic and post-harvest solutions to a broad range of industries including food and beverage, water and wastewater, materials handling, cool storage, meat and wool processing and general manufacturing. Managing Director Peter Richards says the 18-year-old tech company has experienced exponential growth over the past three years and has been looking for an equity partner who could help sustain that growth and ensure longevity. “We wanted a partner founded on similar ideals who would add value and provide market access beyond our existing client base,” Richards explains. “Jenkins Group are an innovative, family-owned company with 136 years of success behind them. They are very client-focused and trade with a high level of integrity which is an excellent fit for us.” Innovation is at the core of both companies, and CRA won the “Most Innovative Solution” award for ABB robotics at the 2019 ASIA Value Provider Conference. Richards says he is immensely proud of the engineering capacity the CRA team has developed and recent growth was primarily due to a strategic initiative of developing bespoke material handling and machinery for a broad range of industry players. “Jenkins were very impressed by CR Automation’s engineering capacity […]

Innovative 3D solutions for AEC Industry

FARO, renowned for 3D imaging solutions for construction BIM, has an innovative set of 3D solutions specifically developed for AEC professionals. FARO Indoor Mobile Scanner As 3D Laser Scanning becomes more ubiquitous across various industries, there is an ever increasing need to make the scanning process and data processing more efficient. Conventionally, this has been addressed with a variety of mobile mapping solutions. However, these solutions typically have limitations in terms of accuracy and data fidelity. The Indoor Mobile Scanning solution enables kinematic 3D scans to be completed up to 7X faster than a series of traditional, fixed point scans over comparable areas. Thus, projects that took days can be executed in just a few hours. Additionally, as the Mobile Scanner includes fixed scan capability as a standard feature, users can simply switch to high-fidelity scan mode in real time for seamless integration with mobile scan data. The Indoor Mobile Scanner solution combines several leading technologies, including FARO’s patented Focus Laser Scanner technology, which have been optimised to operate in concert. Current owners of Focus Laser Scanners or ScanPlan products will have a simple upgrade path to the Indoor Mobile Scanning solution, which protects their original purchase investment. FARO As-Built Modeller FARO As-Built Modeler Software enables AEC professionals to leverage the smoothest Scan to BIM workflow in the industry to date. As-Built Modeler is specifically designed to minimise the effort and time required to create as-built documentation, which is the main task across AEC professionals in the building, facility and infrastructure design phases. This comprehensive and innovative platform automates many cumbersome processing steps that must be performed manually today. Powerful tools allow the easy creation of CAD objects that can be directly imported in any CAD system independent of the specific CAD software, dramatically simplifying the modelling workflow for FARO […]

Worried about artificial intelligence?

Productivity Commission Chair, Murray Sherwin, CNZM We’ve been asked at the Productivity Commission to explore the impact of technological change on the future of work. This month we released New Zealand, technology and productivity – the first of four reports on the topic. We’ve been assigned the task because Ministers are genuinely troubled about the potential for emerging technology, especially robotics and artificial intelligence, to replace workers, undermine the security of work and working conditions, and in doing so, disrupt the labour market and the social order, and undermine wider community wellbeing. There is certainly no shortage of pundits telling us that most jobs will disappear or change fundamentally and that we should prepare for a very different future of work. Our approach is to try to understand what is going on so that we can respond to developments that are real, rather than imagined or assumed. What are the channels by which new technologies enter and diffuse through the New Zealand economy? Adoption of new technology happens as the result of decisions made by individual firms – large and small – across an economy. The ambition for improved profitability and growth are key drivers. We know that adoption of new technologies requires access to capital and may require other complementary investments as well. It’s not usually just a simple case of buying a new machine or computer programme; firms may need to reorganise their business or change their business model. That’s quite an investment and most firms don’t take those decisions lightly. Firms will make decisions in the context of how well their industry and the overall economy is performing, and their owners’ appetite for risk. But we know that when firms adopt tech and improve their bottom line, the country’s productivity also improves, giving us higher income growth […]

Xcelerator speeds digital future of industry

Xcelerator is an integrated portfolio of software, services and application development platform that can be personalised and adapted to fit customer and industry-specific needs to help companies of all sizes become digital enterprises. Xcelerator combines the full portfolio of Siemens’ software for design, engineering and manufacturing with an expanded Mendix low-code, multiexperience application development platform. The Mendix platform now includes cloud and app services for digital engineering and Internet of Things (IoT) powered by MindSphere the cloud-based, open IoT operating system from Siemens, in addition to Mendix’s market-leading unified low-code and no-code development environments. Unique to Xcelerator, this platform drives digital transformation by enabling anyone in the ecosystem, including citizen developers and engineers to easily build, integrate and extend their existing data and systems.

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