Archive for category: Events

Well known entrepreneurial engineer and member of the Vernier Society, Peter Farley, gave a fascinating presentation to the Society at the August meeting on “Australia’s energy policy”.  

Peter’s presentation was packed with facts, figures and analysis that demonstrated his great research knowledge on a subject that he obviously feels passionate about but also the wealth of knowledge and capability that exists with Vernier members.  Peter’s main message was that Australia has not got a sustaining energy policy that is in line with some of the latest self sufficiency thinking worldwide.  Peter’s message was not based on the political view of climate change needing to drive change in our carbon footprint with all the ensuing taxation ramifications, rather that we are just wasting money that could be reused in the economy.  His opening slide set out the message for Australia:

• Energy use in Australia costs $70-80b per year and Australia uses almost twice as much energy per capita or per $GDP as equivalent economies.
  

• A 40% reduction in Victorian energy use would bring us in line with current international standards is this saving is equivalent to the entire state health budget or 20% more than the entire state’s education budget
  

• Australia imports far too much of its liquid fuel needs and has so little stockpile of material that this could leave us extremely vulnerable in a international conflict situation
  

[promobox type=”style3″]Click here to view the slides from Peter’s Presentation[/promobox]

 

Peter not only gave a rich panoply of facts but showed where the potential savings for the future can occur but they need a complete change of government driven policies and admitted that the political will is not currently there and may never be so it is up to the individual in a bottom up approach to drive change.  He identified a number of major areas for the Victorian State and in particular highlight a need for revised thinking on transportation as our thirst for petrol guzzling vehicles currently consumes about 35% of household energy usage.  As expected Peter was a passionate believer in alternative renewable energy sources giving a number of remarkable facts about what is happening worldwide:

• Germany has 23,000 wind  turbines in a country 20 times smaller than Australia.  This year they will install another 1000 and replace 1-200 old machines with much bigger ones.
• In the first half of the year Germany generated as much renewable power to meet 90% of East coast Australian demand.
• In 2017/18 China, Germany, Japan, the US and possibly India will each generate enough renewable electricity to power Australia
• Japan is installing more solar over the next 3 years than Australia’s total generating capacity
• South Australia is approaching 50% renewable electricity  
  

The Vernier audience were left with a great message about how each and everyone one of us must do our bit to reduce energy usage, not just because the government will not take a long term and inter –party view to the issue but that it is essential for the future of the planet!

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Our speaker for August was Peter Farley with a talk on ‘A Sensible Energy Policy for Australia.

Peter Farley is from a farming and small business family, the first in his family to go to university where he studied engineering and later economics. His first job was in Williamstown Naval Dockyard in Maintenance and Production Engineering. He moved from there to CIG where with ANCA they developed Australia’s first CNC plate cutting machines. After a number of other roles he founded Farley Manufacturing which developed world leading CNC cutting machines, 70% of which were exported at prices up to 40% above the leading Japanese and German machines. At its peak sales were over $20m per year. Eventually the company was taken over by a Chinese firm and most of the operation is now in China.

For the last 14 years Peter has run his own consultancy business with the majority of the work overseas. The major current activity is designing a range of machines for the world’s largest fabrication equipment company FICEP in Italy.

Peter has won a number of awards including machine tool of the year from the British Machine Tool Show, Prince Philip design award, Michel medal from Engineers Australia. He is now on the board of the Inner Melbourne VET cluster which co-ordinates vocational training in and out of school for thousands of Victorian students and is a Victorian Committee member for the Institution of Engineers.

Springing from his training as a mechanical engineer and time as manufacturing manager in a large electrical transformer business and his economics studies, Peter has always had a strong interest in energy efficiency and energy policy. He feels that there are huge opportunities for Australia to reduce energy costs while also improving living standards and health outcomes while enhancing Australia’s energy and economic security.

When: August 14th 2014 from 12:30 for a 1pm start. Finishing at 3pm

Where: Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club, 489 Glenferrie Road Kooyong

 

 How to change a company!

The Vernier Society speaker for May was Alan Evans who is the owner of Dyno Dynamics, based in Lilydale Victoria; Dyno Dynamics is Australia’s leading manufacturer of chassis and engine dynamometers distributing their premier products worldwide.  After originally training as an engineer Alan, after realising deskbound engineering was not for him, retrained in Law and Economics leading to a successful career in the public service in a variety of roles.  His professional roles were mirrored by a long standing enthusiasm for motor sport, which ultimately led him and his family to purchase Dyno Dynamics in 2009. What started as a passive investment turned into a very active involvement and a complete makeover of the product range in order to stay both relevant and competitive in the world marketplace.

Alan gave a passionate and enthusiastic talk about the early recognition of needing to radically change the price point of the product in the marketplace through a radical redesign of the product to reduce manufacturing and material costs.  By re-patching the price while maintaining or even improving the product performance, Alan and his team (of which he describes himself as the conductor) were able to widen the product’s attractiveness to a much larger potential market.  In addition, Alan reorganised the company structures giving much more functionality to the key engineering groups.  This process took 2 years with the first sale of the new product at a 2011 trade show, which surprisingly resulted in not just the first but the first twenty sales.  Today the new design has sold over 300 worldwide and has allowed the company to rebuild its presence in the USA, a major market.

It was a fascinating talk targeting both the car and racing enthusiasts of which there are many in the society and the many who still believe, with the right innovative products for niche markets, passion and determination; Australian manufacturing companies can successfully compete in world markets and Dyno Dynamics is a clear example of this belief.

 

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Our speaker this month is Alan Evans from Dyno Dynamics

May 8th 2014 from 12:30 Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club, 489 Glenferrie Road Kooyong

 

“Innovation and staying close to the customer is the key to success” was said in a presentation, worthy of the red carpet, given by Tim Modra, founder of Modra Technology; an export driven company that makes  flexible, small scale carpet making machinery for designers and product development around the world.”

Coming all the way from Warragul to speak at the Vernier Society’s March meeting was Tim Modra, founder and owner of Modra Technology.  The members were delighted he came as he weaved a colourful and very engaging story of the over 20 year journey of his manufacturing company’s development into the world niche provider it is today. While the news is piled high with stories on the decline of manufacturing and the difficulties of exporting, Modra Technology is another hidden success, carefully treading its way to export success as the world’s leader in the manufacture of carpet making machines specifically targeted at the design and product development area.

At the heart of Tim’s success is his mechanical engineering expertise, gained in his early days at Swinburne and through his work experience in a local company he showed his promise by being sent abroad to install product and then joining the company as a contractor.  It was in the early 1990’s that Tim saw the opportunity for developing a small, very flexible carpet making machine because the only way carpet designers could get new design samples made was to take production time of the large high volume machines, which in times of full production was very ineffective.  He produced his first Axminster sample machine in his back garden, selling it to a UK company and now has over 300 machines in 40 countries through 150 customers.

Modra Technology boomed through the early 2000’s and in a frank admission, thought that the boom would go on and on.  He had a staff of 20 and revenues of over $6m when the recession struck and Tim, like many businesses, had to cut back and actually moved his desk back next to the engineers; a move that he suggests came him new insights into product diversification and gave further impetus to the important message he had employed right through his career – the key to success is talking and listening to customers and hearing would benefit them and their business.  And then designing solutions!  It is this passion for the customer that leads Tim to spend a great deal of time on aircraft reaching his major customers in the US and China.  Somewhat surprisingly for a small company Modra prefers to make most mechanical parts in-house and explained that the cost of motion feedback systems is coming down all the time so constant innovation is now his theme.  He has now produced a ‘tufted’ carpet sample machine and has code names for his developments like the ‘split’ and the ‘hedge’.  Tim is enthusiastic about the maxim “If it can’t be done – there is money in it”.

In a lively Q&A session after; besides receiving plaudits from an admiring audience, Tim was asked about the use of government grants, an area close to the Society’s heart after the recent manufacturing audit and while he does try to maximise research tax concessions and took start up grants, he finds like many other companies that the audit process for approval takes too long.  He will have designed, built and delivered the machine by the time the grant application process is completed!

Overall Modra Technology is a great story of innovation; seeing a need in the marketplace and having the ingenuity and determination to fill the need.  It is also another example of the priority of every business to really servicing the customer.  Understand what drives the customer and the way their business is developing is crucial to ongoing success.  As the carpet industry worldwide slowly comes back, Tim has foreseen the need for further automation of the industry and is therefore looking at applying robotics to his machines; a real example of innovative thinking ahead of the curve.  Modra Technology certainly demonstrated its hard wearing qualities and Tim’s presentation was worthy of the red carpet treatment!

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Our speaker this month is Tim Modra who runs Modra Technology, a worldwide business from Warragul. Winner of the 2006 Export category of the Gippsland Business Awards.

13th March 2014 12:30pm for drinks. Lunch from 1pm – 3pm. The Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club at 489 Glenferrie Rd  Kooyong VIC 3142

“Attendees to the Society’s November meeting were privileged to listen to Melbourne University’s Emeritus Professor Joe Isaac who gave his views on the background and current perspectives of the Industrial Relations landscape in Australia today.  Despite his octogenarian years, Professor Isaac still demonstrated a keen and insightful intellect that has obviously underpinned his long and distinguished academic career.   The Professor’s talk embraced four major areas of IR policy; the power of the trade unions, the perceived lack of flexibility in our system, its effect on productivity and areas for possible improvement.

Professor Isaacs opened his address by reminding the audience of part of the speech of Alfred Deakin to Parliament in 1904 that Australian law in this area was based on humanitarian principles and with words that are strangely still appropriate for today:

“It leaves to its opponents the creed, whose God is greed, whose devil in need and whose paradise lies in the cheapest market.”

The Professor posited in answer to the first two issues posed that unionism was declining and that the number of days lost to strikes has declined significantly since the 1970’s.  He pointed out that today there are significantly more days lost to absenteeism than strike action.

With regard to flexibility, Professor Isaac pointed out that Australia in 2006 had the second highest figures for casual employment in the OECD but the down side of this flexibility in the labour market means that it does not provide opportunity for skill formation (Editor – or  company loyalty) that is critical to productivity.  The presentation also gave two other critical facts that must contribute to Australia’s productivity dilemma; that we are above the OECD average in our % of low skilled workers, and we have a higher average of hours worked per week that other OECD countries.  (Editor – when this is considered against our cost of living which has risen significantly and is now much higher, not just against Asian competition but even against the USA and Germany today, it adds to our productivity challenge).

The Professor’s address also covered a number of questions pre-arranged from the audience and while his views on the questions posed could have been seen by some members as ‘left leaning’ he gave a reflective insight into one of the major issues of the Australian economy today as it adapts to face the global challenges of the 21^st century.

Perhaps the lasting memory of Professor Isaac’s talk will be the knowledge and enthusiasm he still brings to his opinion.  He really demonstrated that wisdom should be the valued commodity of old age.”

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Our speaker for November was the Emeritus Professor Joe Isaac from the Department of Management and Marketing, University of Melbourne.

“INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS”

Emeritus Professor Joe Isaac is a Professorial Fellow in the Department of Management, University of Melbourne, following his retirement from the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.  He was Chair of the General Insurance Claims Review Panel from 1993 to 1998.  He was invited by the ILO in May 2002 to advise on suitable research projects to be supported by the ILO in Indonesia.  He has been back with further ILO consultancies for both Indonesia and Timor Leste.  Together with Professor Stuart Macintyre, he was commissioned to edit a centenary history of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (and its antecedents) which was published in 2004.  He continues his interest in the labour market and its institutions.

November 14th 2013 12:30pm. The Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club at 489 Glenferrie Rd  Kooyong VIC 3142

 

Ronson Gears was founded in 1954 by Gordon’s father Ron New, a past member of Vernier.  Gordon a qualified mechanical engineer joined the family business in the mid 70’s along with his brother Terry who now between them still run this family business.   Ronson now employs around 31 people over two shifts, in the high technology facility in Highett.

In 1990, Ronson Gears undertook their first Business Plan which identified a need to see what the Gear Industry was doing in other countries. Consequently, in 1993 Gordon went on his first international discovery tour.  Gordon now travels extensively to stay abreast of the latest developments in the gear industry and, together with his brother Terry, has been successful in taking their family business from being a small job shop into the market leading company it is today, incorporating the latest in Gear manufacturing technology.  As Gordon proudly explained his marketing efforts in the American market led him to membership of the AGMA – the American Gear Manufacturers Association, and Eurotrans, the European Committee of Power Transmission Engineering, Gordon regularly attends international meetings and events of the Gear Industry and has addressed World Gear Summit Meetings and conferences in China, Japan, Thailand, the USA and Europe. Such involvement resulted in him being invited to sit on the Board of Directors of the AGMA, from March 2009 until April 2013.

Ronson has invested significantly in the latest equipment for manufacturing and quality checking gear components that cover a range from 5mm to 900mm.  Ronson, as Gordon explained prides itself in the quality of their design and the delivery of their overall service as is explained on their website by another of the New family, Gavin New of Sales and Marketing “As gear manufacturers, our service needs to be as reliable as our products.  We are committed to delivering our customers the best of both.”

Like a number of other manufacturing skills in Australia the art of gear making is declining but Ronson through exposing themselves to overseas opportunities, particularly in America, are still supporting the proud tradition of quality manufacturing in Australia and this was appreciated by the society with their questions and the warm applause at the end of the presentation.  Thanks to Gordon and Ronson Gears on behalf of the Vernier Society.

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Gordon New the Managing Director of Ronson Gears discussed the latest developments within his company.

September 25th 2013.  12:30pm at Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club