Battle Stations: Sarah's take on 2022 in the Rearview

 

My team won. Soon after this happy shot Efjee (on my left) shot me in the face :(

 

Sometimes it’s easy to get to the end of a year and feel you haven’t achieved enough. So, I took a minute to reflect on what we have achieved – all with the backdrop of unprecedented disruption, it’s been a ride 2022!

Jan

  • 15th - L.A.B & Shapeshifter rock Christchurch. Despite massive queues to check vaccine passes, the masks are gone, party pants are on – 2022 let’s get past this COVID thing and move the hell on.

  • 23rd – while on the shores of Lake Ruataniwha enjoying our last week of the school holidays, NZ goes to Red Traffic Light COVID settings. I jump in the car and head back to Dunedin to get Red Settings in place.

 

L.A.B & Shapeshifter rock Christchurch

 

Feb - April

  • The PINCH – everything that could go wrong does go wrong. We feel the squeeze of material shortages, freight delays, short staff and our clients are going through the same thing.
    We, our clients and suppliers, battle through the wave of Omicron. Everyone rallies covering team members (I wasn’t allowed near a machine, but I can deburr and am pretty handy at packing and shipping!) as they get taken out and compare war stories on symptoms.

  • Sam the man Newlyn makes the move from Auckland down to the metropolis of Dunners to join the team. Taking our skills on the MAZAK 5 axis automated work centre and mill-turn Integrex to another level. As well as providing constant karaoke entertainment singing his way through the day on the shop floor. 

 

Sam Newlyn bringing new style to the shop floor

 

May - June

  • TRADESHOW SEASON. Wow IndoPacific, EMEX & Australian Manufacturing Week all within a 5 week period!
    All three shows were making up for lost time over COVID, frenzied networking would not be an understatement! It was so good to have the masks off and be back out in-front of people. What critical events for industry, showcasing the incredible capabilities across Australasia, it was a hive of activity and felt like a real reunion (well the hangovers did anyway).

  • Launch of the Advanced Manufacturing Industry Transformation Plan (ITP) – over the later half of 2021 and early 2022 I was part of the ITP’s ‘Emerging Technology’ Panel. Our panel’s focus was on the barriers, incentives and initiatives that would drive further investment by industry into advanced manufacturing technology.
    The report I believe is spot on – jury is still out on when we’ll see any implementation. 

 

Sarah on stand at EMEX

 

July

  • Prime Minister’s Australian Trade Mission – what an incredible 5 days! I join a delegation of NZ business leaders to Melbourne and Sydney for a whirlwind overview of the Australian economy, opportunities and the importance of our long-standing free trade agreement. It was a once in a life-time opportunity where I made friends for life and was a catalyst for accelerating our Australian expansion plans.   

 

Prime Minister’s Australian Trade Delegation

 

August

  • United goes ADDITIVE! We add the MarkForged X7 plastics printer to our wheelhouse. It’s carbon fiber and kevlar composite capabilities instantly attract jobs for new and existing customers, as well as some handy fixturing for machining and CMM work-holding.  

  • ISO:9001 Reaccreditation – we passed our ISO:9001 Quality Management System external audit without a single non-conformance. Boom.

 

MarkForged Industrial range X7 (left), Metal X, washer and sinter

 

October

  • Things really ramped up from September onwards and in response we made a number of changes and additions to the team:

  • Welcome back to your NZ family Tom! Tom Janda returned, after 7 months in the Czech Republic where he had returned to be closer to family given the war in nearby Ukraine.

  • Mike Thompson – promoted to Manufacturing Manager. Stepping off the tools and into a leadership role, Mike’s focus in 2023 will be on team development, our apprenticeship programme, manufacturing and quality process improvement.

  • Sharyn Anderton – promoted to Administration Manager, taking over responsibility for the scheduling and administration of all production, customer communications and management of our newly established dispatch officer and supply chain coordinator roles.  

  • Efjee Brits & Sam Newlyn – promoted to Technical Leaders, leading programming, prototyping and enhanced machining capability projects.

  • Nina Hilis – promoted to a full-time new role as Quality Coordinator.

  • After lots of false starts over the last two years, our CMM automation project is fully proven – with a UR5 robot running the CMM for up to 10 hours unmanned operation. Our clever ‘flipper’ allows for handling and flipping of individual components requiring inspection on multiple sides.

 

Team Changes (from left) Yuen Teata Supply Chain & Logistics Coordinator; Sharyn Anderton Administration Manager; Nina Hilis Quality Coordinator

 

November to now:

  • YEOW We WON – Manufacturing Excellence Award at The Grand Business South Awards. It was a shot in the arm for the whole crew, and fantastic night out with our fellow finalists FARRA Engineering and SiteWeld.  

  • Planning Day – it’s hard to slow down at a sprint, but with the end of year approaching we closed the shop for a Planning and Training Day. Oh and then we declared war on each other at Paintball (no thanks for the shot to the face Efjee 😉). In 2023 we plan to close the shop from midday once a month to work on improvements projects.

  • Yuen Teata joins the team in a newly established Supply Chain & Logistics Coordinator role. We officially have the makings of our own band – with Yuen on bass guitar, Fraser and Sam on vocals and Alex on the drums.  

  • Received a Callaghan Innovation Digital Lean grant towards our continual improvements in digital automation. Projects we’ve rolled out include:

    • Commencing paperless job pack trials on a new shop floor user interface

    • Integrating Power Bi to our ERP Global Shop and launching

      • New daily automated standup reporting

      • Enhanced analytics dashboards for scheduling, quality and quoting

 

Morning ‘standup’ around the new automated PowerBi Dashboards

 

Team changes:

  • Rovin D’Cruz who joined us in 2020 through the Callaghan Innovation Summer Student programme is stepping across to a new role leading our additive manufacturing in 2023

  • Jared Sims who has been working with us part-time for the last 18 months whilst studying towards his mechanical engineering degree at Otago Polytechnic, is stepping into Rovin’s shoes as the primary programmer for the CMM.

  • Callum Scott joins us as a Summer R&D student working with Alex on a couple of Top Secret design projects.

But most notably this year, is the incredible amount of new work we’ve onboarded. It’s been a phenomenal effort led by Alex and his technical team. As is the nature of the work we do – we can’t share any detail, except to say in the last 6 months we have onboarded:

-          209 new parts

-          25 new customers

-          Over 800 hours of programming

 
 

So take a leaf out of my book. Step back, reflect and congratulate yourself on what has been an unpredictable yet highly productive year for us all. 

Huge thanks to all of our suppliers and clients who’ve truly partnered with us this year to get better together.

Sarah Ramsay