Innovation

In doing so, we soon saw that those embarking on this journey with us were at different stages of innovation adoption and placing them all through the same program often didn’t align to their needs.

A missing piece to this puzzle was giving context to each companies innovation readiness or maturity.

Since then, we’ve been working towards a digital dashboard dubbed MetalMind which assesses companies on a range of innovation metrics. This will allow us to target our leadership training program to the specific needs of the company as well as create a valuable data baseline to measure how this training and development is helping their bottom line.

To find out more about kick starting your journey with an innovation audit, contact our Innovation and Transformation Architect, Greg Buckley

Exploring the future of automation is very much on the minds of our industry. That’s why we’re undertaking several touchpoints in the automation space to help those within this interest group.

Spearheading trips to the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Facility for Intelligent Fabrication (FIF) in Australia to help attendees experience first hand advances being made in several areas such as robotics, augmented reality, scanners and dust suppression technology.

As well as conducting welding automation and productivity assessments to help identify fabricators and/or fabrication processes within operations that can be automated to improve efficiencies, achieve cost savings and avoid time delays.

In terms of research, we’ve also got a project running on data collection and analysis (a Welding 4.0 project) and have had our Welding Engineer and Automation Cluster lead Holger Heinzel spend time at the FIF to expand our in-house capability in automation and robotics to better support our members.

To find out more about this group and get involved, contact our Welding and Automation Cluster Lead, Holger Heinzel

In cooperation with NZDIA and DMTC we’ve developed a “Defence Ready” program to establish welding fabrication capabilities critical to achieving the industry base so our members can participate in the Australian Defence Project.

This is because Australia is making a massive $200 billion dollar investment in defence capability over the next decade, which represents a significant business opportunity for our industry to seize.

So far, we’ve facilitated a presentation by Mark Hodge DMTC CEO, Michael Mclean from the Sydney Business School and Prof Stephen van Duin, Maritime Platforms Program Leader DMTC to interested parties to highlight the range of opportunities for New Zealand contractors, participation rules and compliance requirements, as well as run bespoke defence workshops to further support development opportunities within businesses.

To find out more about this group and get involved, contact our General Manager Welding Centre, Michail Karpenko

We know that the challenges associated with the skills crisis, labour shortages, the future of work and attracting and retaining future engineers weigh heavily on the minds of our members.

It’s why we’ve created this forum – so together, we can discuss the future workforce of the NZ metals industry, and tackle this issue head on.

Our industry should strive to position itself as employers of choice. To do that we need to refresh our approach in terms of work environment, technology uptake & sustainability.

This interest group looks at ways to achieve that through collaborative relationships with industry leaders in the human resource space, training, guidance and thought leadership.

To find out more about this group and get involved, contact our Innovation and Transformation Architect, Greg Buckley

One thing we’ve come to learn is that our industry has not been the best at sharing our heart story or being clear and concise on our stance in certain arenas.

We’ve worked hard to rectify this. Engaging an external market research company to understand NZ societies perception of the metals industry in Aotearoa so that we can create more meaningful connections.

It has lead to us taking a thought leadership role for our industry in topics that count.

We know that our industry is a major contributor to the wellbeing of New Zealand’s economy. Moving forward, we’re committed to telling that story better so we can earn the trust of Kiwis and demonstrate the major role we have to play in making a better New Zealand.

This interest group is designed to provide support and tools to help our members to embrace social media platforms, improve their websites and most importantly – create consistency around our core messages.

To find out more about this group and get involved, contact our Innovation and Transformation Architect, Greg Buckley

For many of our members, engaging in the development of a marketing and communications strategy for their business is not high on the priority list. Not surprisingly – it’s those ‘business as usual’ tasks that are the focus and where most resources and budget are placed.

This hurts us from two perspectives.

Firstly because it means we have very limited ways to communicate key industry content to our members and industry. And secondly, because it means we’re not communicating externally to NZ society about our value proposition as effectively as we could. A prime example of this is the Wood First Policy which has received strong Government support due to strong communication strategies garnering materials support for the timber industry.

To overcome this, we’ve developed this in-house media room facility to assist our members in creating content that can deliver key messages. More importantly – this achieved without having to spend on the equipment, or full time employee. Instead sharing the cost with other companies.

Find out more here

It’s goal being to develop in-house capability to create a simple, achievable plan to move towards greater digital communication capabilities that will address issues identified and opportunities for growth.

Touch bases with our Innovation and Transformation Architect, Greg Buckley to find out about our next training session.