Our editorial series on researchers led by UniSA’s search for companies to develop surface processing capabilities in a planned Surface Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (SMCRC), talks to Professor Colin Hall, industry professor at UniSA. It is no coincidence that a proposal to establish a new Surface Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre comes from an institution, and…
By Peter Roberts Tired of hearing that manufacturers are rent seekers asking for handouts from the government? Tired of paying tax? Well, now you don’t need to – in Australia corporate tax is somewhat voluntary depending on who you are. Instead of being in the difficult-to-make-a-buck manufacturing sector perhaps you should think about getting into…
The University of Queensland’s Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology is to work with Graphene Manufacturing Group in its quest to commercialise novel Graphene Aluminium-Ion Battery Technology. The development, supported by the federal government’s Economic Accelerator Seed Grant, will accelerate under a partnership between AIBN material chemist Dr Xiaodan Huang (pictured, below) and GMG’s supporting…
Not every mechatronics engineering student gets to have a billion-dollar idea. Xavier Orr did. It was the second-half of the 2000s, before the explosion in machine learning led by AlexNet and Google Brain. Rather than image classification, Orr was studying a neural network alternative to the Kalman filter. Kalman is an algorithmic technique used since the…
By Bruce Mountain, Victoria University Last night ABC’s Four Corners investigated the problem-plagued Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro power station, focusing on a bogged tunnelling machine, toxic gas and an unexpected volume of sludge. While these specific problems are new, we have criticised this project since 2019 and outlined six key problems even earlier elsewhere. How…
@AuManufacturing’s latest online webinar – Your Digitisation Journey – is now available online for you to view via our YouTube channel. Hear how Christopher Janssen, Managing Director at GPC Electronics, harnessed technology to become Australia’s largest electronics manufacturer. Vanessa Katsanevakis, Director of Sussex Taps talks of the sophisticated manufacturing, materials tracking and storage and metal…
Christopher Janssen, Managing Director at GPC Electronics, leverages manufacturing technologies to enable him to produce electronic systems in batches of 2, or batches of 100,000 from his three factories in Sydney, New Zealand or China. Employing 500 people globally, GPC is Australia’s largest electronics manufacturer, boasting a customer list of household names and a single…
By Adam Bartley, RMIT University and Matthew Warren, RMIT University A 12-tonne fishing boat weighs anchor three kilometres off the port of Adelaide. A small crew huddles over a miniature submarine, activates the controls, primes the explosives, and releases it into the water. The underwater drone uses sensors and sonar to navigate towards its pre-programmed…
There are many ways to skin the digitisation cat. While some manufacturing CEOs see digitisation through the prism of hard manufacturing technologies, others such as Vanessa Katsanevakis, Director of Sussex Taps are focussed on softer, but equally essential issues. Since Katsanevakis took over the business from father Nicholaas Johannes van Putten in 2011, she has…
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Monthly Business Turnover Indicator has shown improvement in eight of 13 industries tracked for the month of August, with the biggest jump coming from manufacturing. The indicator, launched in 2021 and tracking figures from companies that submit Business Activity Statements (BAS) monthly, recorded a 6.4 per cent rise for manufacturers…
