Learning paying dividends
A GEELONG manufacturing leadership program has delivered almost $11 million in reduced costs and productivity improvements to the 11 businesses which had employees take part.
The 23 participants in the Geelong Manufacturing Council’s Leadership for Manufacturing Excellence Program presented their improvement projects at their graduation day last week.
This year’s winning project was awarded to Markus McEwen, Marcus McVilly and Prasath Poornasundaram from Air Radiators who identified and implemented a project with annual savings of $200K in reduced order lead time, freeing up $1.6 million in production capacity.
The runners-up were the IXL Group team of Tammie Coleman, Pathavee Srima and Paul Ivorsen who introduced process savings totalling $175K a year for two separate areas in the business.
Their system can be replicated in other business areas, creating ongoing savings and benefits.
Incitec Pivot provided two improvement projects: improving test result turnaround times in the test lab that provide a $93K a year saving, and a project that reduced vehicle loading costs by $135,000 and improved vehicle loading output representing an extra $2.55 million in revenue.
Farm Foods participants Vaughan Kruger and Ivan Dimic identified a critical improvement for the business by developing a new digital production process management solution which will allow the business to expand into export markets.
Other participants from VIVA Energy, Geelong Galvanizing, Rendine Construction, Avalon Airport and Carbon Revolution and Chemring represented a total value of $2 million in savings. Across the broader group, a total benefit to the businesses was $10.9 million.
Since its inception in 2012, the GMC leadership program has delivered an average return on investment to participating businesses of more than $300,000, either through operational improvement projects or improved long-term profitability.
Manufacturing council CEO David Peart said that 2018 leadership program had delivered outstanding results to Geelong businesses.
“The $11 million in benefits identified for participant companies is important to ensuring these companies are improving their competitiveness and ability to invest and employ,” he said.
“The companies get immediate results and participants have exposure to learnings from 10 of the best companies in the region. We are now taking expressions of interest for 2019.”