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Recent key developments in MAKE│NZ
• This week’s GuessMasters® question needs a bit of introduction. For more than a year now, shipping in the Red Sea has been disrupted by attacks from Houthi forces, resulting in most container shipping lines (except CMA-CGM) re-routing most of their vessels on the Asia-to-Europe route around South Africa. Apart from anything else, this has increased the risk of containers being lost overboard during rough seas in the Cape area, especially in winter. Since August 16 of this year, there have been reported losses of 194 containers overboard from four vessels off the cost of South Africa. In the worst single incident, 99 containers went overboard at once.
• Statistically speaking, a container from New Zealand incurring that fate would look like this:
and most likely be filled with 838 25kg-bags of whole-milk powder on two layers of pallets.
This week’s question: How many bags of milk powder could you still load in that 20-ft container if you wanted to make sure it would still float if washed overboard?
n.b. – Last week we received a number of correct answers from people who did internet searches. Please remember the rules for this game: We’re not after the fastest typist / search engine query expert. What we’re after is to find out what people carry around in their heads in terms of information that will allow them to come up with a guess that is as close as possible to the correct answer. By way of exception, though, for this week’s question it’s ok to use the calculator function of your phone …
Please email your guess to dieter@makenz.org . For the answer to last week’s question, and our latest entry to the MAKE│NZ GuessMasters’ Honours Board, please go to the end of this newsletter.
• Last Wednesday saw the first Hardware Meetup to take place in Christchurch. Expanding to this trial run in Christchurch, the Hardware Meetup team hold events focusing on the hardware aspect of manufacturing, focusing on showcasing different manufacturers capabilities and creating a space for those in the hardware-focused world to share with each other.
With around 60 attendees in the room and small gatherings at the livestreams in Queenstown and Invercargill, it was a great turn out.
The first speaker was Brendon Hale from Basis. He spoke on their journey to developing “Smart Switchboards”, a journey which began during Covid and has been growing since. Their focus being to make a switch board that’d allow the customer to see exactly which appliance and when is using the most electricity.
Next was Daniel Milligan from Syft Technologies, who introduced us to a company that was originally a Christchurch University PHD project from back in 2002. They’ve developed devices that can offer real time air inspection to track down even minute quantities and locations of different pollutants. They’ve become internationally popular, especially in border security in Canada and Australia where their devices are used to inspect containers coming into each respective country. Their business plan came from the mentality of “I think I have a problem WE can solve.” – finding very specific issues that no one but them could fix.
Finally, we had Jason Orchard from Evnex. He walked us through the journey Evnex took to get where they are today, offering at-home chargers for EVs. He showed photos of some of the earliest prototypes right up to where they are now, really focusing on the fact that “Half the challenge is in product design, half is in manufacturing the product.”
One of the key takeaways from each speaker, coincidentally happening to tie in with the main focus of MAKE│NZ, was the need for community among manufacturers. At the end of each talk, each speaker was asked if there was anything they needed that someone in the audience might be able to help with. All three speakers mentioned how important it is for manufacturers to work with each other, learning from each other’s mistakes and sharing knowledge.
As time goes on, and with MAKE│NZ working with others, like the Hardware Meetup, we can grow to become a stronger network of manufacturers – Christchurch and New Zealand-wide.
Recent key developments in New Zealand
• Over the weekend, I spent some time with my youngest son and his family in Auckland. They live in the Cohaus, a twenty-unit housing development in Grey Lynn. Apart from anything else, the development has taken an interesting approach to managing energy supply and demand. They have installed a 40 kW-max photovoltaic set-up, and I was shown some data on the cost-benefit calculations of such an installation. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive all the detailed information we were after in time for this edition, so watch this space …
We couldn’t find any data on the total area of roof space on commercial buildings in the greater Auckland area, but the floor space in the Highbrook Business Park in East Tamaki alone is estimated to be around 500,000 m2. It would be an interesting exercise to calculate the theoretical generation capacity, were 20% of the roof space at Highbrook to be used for photovoltaic generation, for example …
Recent key developments in the World
• This is the second part of our interview with Alastair Crawford, a director of LMAC, one of New Zealand’s leading advancing manufacturing consultancies. You’ll find Part 1 in our Tuesday Top-Up newsletter No. 19 of Nov. 19, 2024. We interviewed Alastair to find out more about where manufacturing, and especially SME manufacturing, is at in the UK these days, and how it compares to New Zealand.
• In this part we shall
– Finish looking at the introduction of advanced / networked manufacturing technologies
– Cover the outlook for labour and skills required to grow the UK’s manufacturing sector
– Talk about wider stakeholder expectations of and constraints on the sector
Last time we spoke about the uptake, especially by manufacturing SMEs, of digital technologies in general. The ‘next big thing’, of course, is artificial intelligence [AI]. Alastair’s observations are that it’s basically not used in any manufacturing processes themselves. But it’s used successfully on ‘peripheral’ (back-office) processes like putting together marketing brochures, etc. The big challenge with AI in manufacturing is getting people to understand what it is, and where it can be gainfully employed, and where it can’t. Alastair quotes the example of a company that uses predictive analytics to forecast and manage parts requirements for their maintenance and repairs business, and he is now engaged with another big manufacturer that wants to use predictive analytics in the planning for some of its key processes. Arguably, this is not using AI methods, but people like to put the AI badge on it. It is just using advanced data analytics and using all data available to make better decisions.”
In Alastair’s view, the use of all available data, and the integration of systems, to get things running smoother is where the opportunities are for those smaller companies – automating the management of data using digital solutions. In his observation, that approach can also be gainfully employed in supply chain management. Where manufacturers experience volatility in demand, getting their suppliers, who are often manufacturing SMEs, to be flexible in responding to their customer’s fluctuating demand is a common real-life challenge. Using data analytics to identify underlying patterns in that volatility, but also digital links and automated data exchange across supply chain partners, can make supply chains a lot more efficient – using EDIs [Electronic Data Interchange] instead of emailing Excel spreadsheets back and forth. That has been common practice in the automotive industry for many years but is still not that widely used in other parts of manufacturing.
• The next topic we covered was the availability of a suitably-skilled workforce in sufficient quantity, given that the process changes mentioned above will introduce new skills requirements in the manufacturing workforce – in the UK as much (or more) than in New Zealand.
In Alastair’s view, the vocational education and training [VET] / apprenticeship system in the UK is more mature than in New Zealand, and has been for many years – notwithstanding the fact that a number of New Zealand manufacturers have excellent apprenticeship training arrangements in place. In September, the new Labour government announced a range of measures to improve VET (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-overhauls-apprenticeships-to-support-opportunity ): “These new apprenticeships will give young people a route in to careers in critical sectors, enabling them to earn a wage whilst developing vital skills.
The new levy will also allow funding for shorter apprenticeships, giving learners and employers greater flexibility over their training than under the existing system – where apprenticeships must run for at least 12 months.”
There are a number of other initiatives to attract young people into manufacturing, with big UK organisations supporting it. A few weeks ago, the UK again held its National Manufacturing Day, where school kids get invited to visit manufacturing companies. These initiatives now appear to gain some traction, with more people recognising that manufacturing has got an important part to play. Given the UK’s ageing workforce in manufacturing, there is a need to act without delay, and there are a lot of people lobbying for more money going into attracting young people to manufacturing.
In another development, Brexit has led to a significant increase in automation especially in food & beverage manufacturing, where low-skilled jobs were filled with migrant workers, often from Eastern Europe. Those workers are now no longer available due to the changed immigration rules introduced as part of Brexit.
• When comparing the UK with New Zealand in terms of management practices in manufacturing businesses, Alastair doesn’t see a huge differences between the two countries. Employers and senior managers in the UK have a lot more exposure to conferences and seminars – there are a lot more events they can go to, to raise your awareness of what is the latest best practice, but a lot of these are primarily technology-focused, rather than being organised around HR practices, for example.
• When it comes to external pressures on how manufacturers conduct their business, again focusing on SMEs, a major thing in the UK is the importance of digital security. From a digital security point of view, if manufacturers want to be able to supply to tier-one suppliers or the OEMs, they have to have good digital security programs and processes in place, it’s almost a minimum-needed-to-play requirement. A lot of it is around being ISO 27001-compliant. They need that to be able to work with the many of the large companies. And from there, the next thing is environmental credentials, having policies and procedures around how companies manage that, which is becoming more of a procurement topic, too. The UK is no longer part of the EU, where these things are getting more and more rampant, but for manufactures wanting to supply into the EU, these demands still exist. Fortunately, there is now quite a lot of funding around for companies to invest in technologies and sensors to start recording their energy usage and CO2 budgets, so it’ relatively easy to get started on that journey and prepare for future changes in government regulations and customer demands.
And the correct answer to last week’s GuessMaster® question is – 1861
• The first patent registered to a New Zealand manufacturer was granted on March 26, 1861, following the establishment of the New Zealand Patent Office under the Patents Act 1860. That was only possible after New Zealand established its own intellectual property rights legislation, triggered by the filing for this patent: the Purchas and Ninnis Flax Patent Act of 1860.
The patent specification was deposited at the Colonial Secretary’s Office in Auckland on October 10, 1860by the inventors, Arthur Guyon Purchas and James Ninnis, who were business partners in a flax milling operation.
The patent was granted to Purchas and Ninnis for “An Invention for the preparation of the Fibre of the Phormium tenax (flax) and other plants for manufacturing purposes”. This patent, known as NZ Patent No. 1, was for a plant fibre dressing process and leaf-stripping machine used to manufacture rope and woven fabric. The invention was specifically designed for processing New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax), which was an important industrial material at the time. It also received international recognition, winning a medal for flax fibre prepared using their patented process at the London World Exposition of 1862.
• Today, New Zealand is not a major force when it comes to patenting by international comparison:
The vast majority of patents filed in New Zealand are foreign, mostly from the US, and in terms of product class, pharmaceutical patents clearly dominate the picture.
Most of the New Zealand domestic patents are filed by academic research institutions (Top 10; data for the period 2000 to 2019):
– AgResearch
– University of Auckland
– Waikato University
– Fonterra Group
– Gallagher Group
– Callaghan Innovation (Industrial Research Limited)
– Massey University
– Horticulture & Food Research Institute
– Carter Holt Harvey
– Fisher and Paykel
“On 13 September 2014, the Patents Act 20137 went into effect. This action introduced a significant change to the way patent prosecution was handled in New Zealand. Under previous regulation, introduced in 1953, New Zealand was nearly unique in the way that novelty was defined. Globally, in order to qualify for patent protection, one filing for patent protection had to demonstrate absolute novelty of the invention to be protected. This meant that any prior art, from any jurisdiction, could be a disqualifying matter preventing the grant of a patent. In New Zealand, inventions merely had to meet local novelty. … As such, if New Zealand patents are indeed more difficult to obtain under the provisions of the new Act.” (Source: see above)
It would be wrong, however, to conclude from the above that there is a lack of innovation in New Zealand manufacturing. In most non-food manufacturing, product and process innovations are incremental, and often customer-led. Seeking patent protection would make no sense commercially and, given the nature of the innovations involved, likely to be unsuccessful in many instances.
And the winner for last week’s GuessMasters® challenge is: Tom Thomson, Managing Director of EPL – Congratulations!
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