Productivity, competitiveness and sustainability are key issues for Australian manufacturers

Productivity, competitiveness and sustainability are the most significant trends for manufacturers in Australia according to the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) Australian Working Group.

At the first MESA seminar held in Australia, Greg Johnson, Chairperson for the MESA Asia Pacific Expansion Committee and Senior Sales Executive for the Schneider Electric Industry Business, presented new research undertaken by MESA across APAC.

The research shows the benefits of manufacturing enterprise solutions or MES - the systems that plan, operate, control and report on shop floor activities - are perceived as very wide by operational level managers, but that a better job needs to be done in translating those benefits to hard ROI for the C-level.

The MESA research shows that 61% of operations managers plan to expand the systems that plan, operate, control and report on shop floor activities. However, only 27% of respondents say that MES has been embraced by the majority of individuals within their organisation.

“While Lean and Six Sigma programs have been used extensively over the last five to 10 years, there has been mixed success in implementation, and hard return on investment (ROI) has been difficult to define. Similarly for IT investments, there has been a large investment in systems both corporately and on ‘the shop floor’. Current thinking is turning to how these two improvement programs can be better targeted and used together to improve ROI,” said Greg Johnson.

“According to the research, over the last five years, 26% of respondents have spent between US$500,000 and $5 million on MES, with close to 10% spending between US$5 million and $10 million. The industry is starting to see benefits from MES but more work needs to be done in communicating this across the C-level of organisations. This will strengthen the influence of MES and deliver more significant benefits to industry,” Johnson continued.

“As low-cost competition continues to impact the Australian market, it is vital Australian manufacturers compete on innovation, quality, service and other non-cost dimensions. As well as this, sustainable manufacturing and particularly energy management have become increasingly important factors in manufacturing and can be a real differentiator for Australian companies.

“From a technology perspective, automation is key and has moved beyond simple process automation, to automation of manufacturing business processes. Manufacturers are looking to vendors and standards bodies to provide the vision and solutions to integrate ‘shop-floor to top-floor’,” Johnson said.

“For example, Schneider Electric customer Adelaide Brighton Cement presented a case study at the seminar which showed how low-level automation data could be leveraged into information that helped in significantly improving plant performance.”

MESA (Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association) International is a global community of manufacturers, producers, industry leaders and solution providers who are focused on improving operations management capabilities through the effective application of technology solutions and best practices.