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One of our new year’s resolutions was to make our Tuesday Top-Up newsletter even more tempting to read. We don’t think our readers will be more ‘time-rich’ in 2026, so we’ll break our content down into more themes, allowing you to pick and choose what you are most interested in if you don’t have the time to read all of it. These will be the themes, although we do not expect to have content for each of these in every edition of your newsletter:
- What’s been happening in our MAKE│NZ Community
- Future events and activities
- Local gems we found in our MAKE│NZ Community – and if you have found something surprising, amazing or impressive about manufacturing in New Zealand, please let us know. This can be a ‘big thing’, but often observations on things that don’t look spectacular but have a big impact are the most rewarding to share
- Members supporting Members – the heart of what we do. This can be requests or offers for support in whatever form: information, labour, or other productive resources (machinery and equipment). This is the theme where your contributions really count! They can be anonymous to other members if required.
- News from the world of manufacturing – in New Zealand and beyond
- Other news of interest to manufacturers
- Fun facts – here we’ll include snippets things you might be interested in and/or may never have come across, from the world of manufacturing, and beyond. Usually just a photo or a diagram.
Future events and activities
•We’ve got two events coming up, both on Monday, Feb. 16. The first is an Extraordinary General Meeting of the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association (NZMEA) – the ‘parent organisation’ behind MAKE│NZ. You may be aware from other activities you’re involved with that all Incorporated Societies (“Associations”) have to adopt new constitutions that are compliant the new Incorporated Societies Act 2022. The NZMEA is an incorporated society, so that means us as well. Invitation to his meetings have been sent to registered members of MAKE│NZ (NZMEA) and we trust many of these will attend
•The second one, and on the same day, immediately following the above at 5:30 p.m., will be our first Fireside Chat event for the year. The topic will be product design. We’ll look at the eternal conflict between Design for Functionality and Design for Manufacturing.
Speakers will be Barro de Gast, Senior Lecturer at the School of Product Design, University of Canterbury, and Jeff McDowell, Engineering Manager and Kent Stewart, R&D Manager, both at Wyma Solutions.Barro’s research centres on industrial product design, manufacturing processes, and user interaction. But Barro has also brought numerous products to market, particularly in the home and outdoor sectors. His approach integrates manufacturing processes in unique ways to develop innovative designs and enhance user experiences.
News from the world of manufacturing
•We talked about the impact of AI on job prospects for young people, especially those with a graduate degree, in a recent edition. Under the headline of “Ditch textbooks and learn how to use a wrench to AI-proof your job?”, a recent article in The Economist brought together two recent observations from the US linked to the arrival of AI in the workplace:
(1) youth unemployment for school leavers without further education remains steady at around 10%, whereas the rate for those with a post-secondary degree has increased significantly:
(2) Interest and participation in vocational education keep growing in extension of a ten-year trend:
Most recently, the National Student Clearinghouse reported that vocational public two-year enrolment jumped 11.7% year over year in spring 2025.
• Similar developments can be found elsewhere. In the UK, apprenticeship starts for the 2024/25 academic year were up by 4.1% to 353,500 compared to 339,580 reported for the previous year. Even more spectacular was the rise in higher-level apprenticeships. Starts at Level 6 and 7 increased by 20.4% compared to 2023/24 to 60,350, with 26,780 starts at level 6 and 33,560 at level 7. The growth was strongest in Business, Administration and Law, but enrolment also grew in Construction, Planning and the Built Environment and in Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies.
•A recent survey of 5,600 Canadians in the general population found an increasing preference for vocational over university education …
… with even almost half of those with a university degree themselves recommending trade training, while only 38% suggested it would be better to choose what they chose for themselves:
Looking at actual enrolments in the province of Alberta, apprenticeship registrations approached an all-time high in 2025, with over 72,000 registered apprentices, a 14% increase in just one year.
Maybe – hopefully – we’ll see similar developments in New Zealand once the dust has settled after the recent series of perturbations in our vocational education system!
Other news of interest to manufacturers
•This recent photo caught my attention:
The 2025 F1 Championship brought victories to Lando Norris (Drivers) and his team McLaren-Mercedes (Constructors) – and here’s the photo that says it all. How many people did it take to support Norris and his teammate Oscar Piastri? Approximately 1,700 – obviously not all of them involved in trackside activities and in the frame above. A striking example of “All for One” – or two, as it were, in this case.
Apart from the physical features of the car (engine, chassis/suspension, aerodynamics, etc.) and driver performance, two other main factors contribute to success in F1 racing: decisions on tyre choice and pit stop timing and frequency, and the performance of the pit crew.
Looking at the latter, here are the incredible tight performance benchmarks:
| KPI Segment | Description | Benchmark (Good) |
|---|---|---|
| Total Stationary Time | The time from car at 0 km/h to the pit light turning green. | < 2.2 seconds |
| Pre-Gun Reaction | How early the gun operator is on the axle before the car stops. | ~0.1 – 0.2s |
| Nut OFF | Time taken to loosen the wheel nut. | < 0.2 seconds |
| Tyre Exchange | The “cross” time between the old wheel coming off and the new one going on. | ~0.8 – 1.0s |
| Nut ON / Tighten | Time to tighten the nut and receive a torque confirmation signal. | < 0.3 seconds |
| Release Latency | The gap between the final wheel being secured and the green light signal. | ~0.15s (FIA-regulated) |
And here is the performance of the pit crews for the top 3 teams throughout the season (Gold Star indicates a McLaren race win):
Since 2015, German logistics company DHL has been handing out awards for the best pit crew performance overall, recognising “teamwork and performance”. The McLaren team came second behind Ferrari but also scored the three shortest times overall (1.91s / 1.94s / 1.94s):
One can only imagine the amount of continuous investment in process improvement required to achieve and maintain these pit stop performances. Recent changes introduced by McLaren were:
- expanding the pool of pit-stop-capable staff to support a 24-race calendar and triple-headers, reducing over-reliance on a small core group and helping sustain performance across the season
- training crew members for multiple roles (e.g. wheel-off, wheel-on, gun, jack), with each having a primary role but able to step into others at high performance, increasing resilience to absence or injury
- adjusting pit-stop practice volume by event, increasing repetitions when integrating new crew and reducing them at physically demanding races (e.g. Singapore-type conditions) to limit fatigue, which is more process-driven than many traditional fixed-drill approaches.
When it comes to decisions made by the McLaren team sporting director (race director) in consultation with the drivers, three factors set Mc-Laren-Mercedes apart in 2025. All of these are related to design features of suspension and aerodynamics settings:
- More one-stop races: while in some races (Chinese, Japanese, and Hungarian GP) data showed that theoretically the fastest strategy for the field was a two-stop, McLaren drivers could extend their stints on Medium (C3) tyres long enough to make a one-stop viable
- McLaren drivers were able to ‘fire up’ Hard tyres almost immediately. This meant they can maximise speed on new Hard tyres straight away, whereas a Red Bull driver might need a lap to bring the tyres in gently
- Suspension and aerodynamics settings also allowed the McLaren drivers to push 100% through high-speed corners without their rear tyre temperatures spiking. This allowed them to maintain a consistent pace from Lap 1 to Lap 20 of a stint, whereas competitors saw a sharp drop-off after Lap 10.
The question, as always, has to be: are there any lessons in the above for manufacturers? The first one has to be the relentless pressure on continuous process improvement, which is much easier not to lose sight of when competition is as intense and constant as in F1 racing.
The more important point may be the importance of optimising all processes and all other factors contributing to performance overall. Most people’s interest in F1 is focused on the drivers, and, maybe, on tactical decisions where they have gone wrong with a major impact on race outcomes. One rarely hears about pit crew performance, for example.
Do you have ‘drivers’ in your operations, processes and factors that most of the attention is aimed at, to the detriment of others?
•It is tempting to compare the impressive performance of F1 pit crews with other scheduled regular activities. Air New Zealand’s domestic operations, for example. The Ministry of Transport [MoT] keeps track of and reports data on airline performance in terms of cancellations and punctuality (±15 min. of scheduled time). Here are the results of one particular route where plenty of personal observation is also available:
MoT only publishes monthly aggregate data. Personal observation is that flights on/after 6.p.m. are delayed (much) more frequently. In the majority of cases, the reasons provided are “Late arrival of inbound aircraft” or “Crewing requirements”, meaning the delays have led to (parts of) the crew hitting statutory time limits and needing to be replaced. Looks like a systemic problem worth fixing, maybe?
Fun facts
For a lot of performance measures, trends (changes over time) are as important as absolute values. Employee engagement is one of these. Gallup is a workplace consultancy and global research company that has been doing in-depth research since 1935. Here are its latest results on employee engagement:
Clearly it looks like US employers have been leading the field for many years now when it comes to “work like you own the company” …
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