Australian Manufacturing

[xelasnave]

Thank goodness for the local hippies because they are putting beads on string and making wig wams and as such appear to be the last of us involved in manufacturing.
I can't think of anything we make anymore..is there anything we manufacture now...besides wine and kitchens.

[el_draco]

We make particularly stupid politicians..... Worlds best I suspect :D

[Solitarian]

Cups of coffee and fast food:lol:

Seriously, that's about all this country is good for these days :help:

[xelasnave]

Seems stupid not to keep up some degree of skill.
We do things well why can't we become the worlds best weapons manufacturers for example.
Build our own fighter jets.
Save car manufacture before all sckills are lost.
What happened to our submarine building or did we buy overseas

[rrussell1962]

Yes, very sad indeed. It is cheaper to make a lot of stuff overseas, but in the long term the loss of skills will tell against us. I very occasionally go back to the UK, it is now a country based on dodgy banks and picture framing shops. As to why we don't make fighter planes here - too expensive, even the European Union makes them as a consortium and for all I know outsources the manufacture to China! Australia is now a country that digs up dirt and flogs it to the rest of the world to assemble. Sad but true.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Alex

Our Pollies of the day decided to buy a sub assembled using allen keys instead of the semi proven German type 2000.
The resulting problems crippled out credibility, and as such the
pollies now run a mile rather than try again.

Andrew

There are only 2 types of naval vessel.
Submarines and targets :-)

[koputai]

There are actually quite a lot of small manufacturing firms operating in Aus. I had a very small niche manufacturing business for a few years, and a number of my friends still do. Yes, big manufacturing is definitely almost gone, but there are still people out there working very hard at it.

My customers were mainly in the UK, Europe, and the US, so I was actually bringing money in to Australia.

Cheers,
Jason.

[ZeroID]

Research, development and scale of operations cost. It's always cheaper to manufacture where the maximum resource is located be that people or whatever.
The local answer is niche manufacturing as Jason says. High value, small footprint products that are very much in demand and can therefore command a good return.
We were in Vanuatu a few years back talking to one of the locals and he was setting up a Sandalwood plantation. Very much in demand in the perfume and cosmetics industry. He had a niche that didn't require bulk shipping costs and heavy duty manufacturing requirements none of which were available up there. I hope he's done well from it.

[RickS]

Australia is a terribly small market. The last several companies I have been involved with design in Australia, manufacture in China and sell to the world. We have plenty of smart people but no natural advantage when it comes to generic manufacturing.

Cheers,
Rick.

[Jason_FJ_Djamm]

Why bother trying to manufacture anything in Australia, we are too lazy to get out of our own way these days. Our sole concern on waking is discovering some new way to rort the system. If we have created any industry in the past decade, it is the industry of entitlement. The sound of industry has been replaced by the perpetual whine of people who make a lifestyle of complaint and little more. The system owes me a living. Why should I have to work for it? That's the new motto of the workers of Australia.

Our kids can't do basic maths, can't spell, can't string two spoken words together, don't read, don't think. We'd have to staff these new businesses with migrant workers to have any chance of survival. Might as well let those workers do the job in their home countries and save us the trouble.

[xelasnave]

Well Jason I would suggest that the condition you observe may well be traced to the fact our manufacturing has gone.
Really what do many young folk have to look forward to on work..become a waiter, bar maid or a sex worker. Getting a job as a check out clerk is now considered a rather good career.
Cheaper should not be the measure of better.

[el_draco]

This is consequence of not bothering to put the effort in at school. Very few young people study and, as a consequence, limit themselves to the above "professions". The attitude is often one of, "The government will PAY me". I've confronted a few of these slugs with the reality of who actually gives them the money they get and they seem either shocked or totally disinterested.

If we want to improve the situation, we need to get smarter. Cant compete with slave camps on the labour front, and we are losing the edge on the knowledge front.... Of course, that situation is unlikely to change while we have short sighted num-num pollies who think that "coal is good for humanity"

[xelasnave]

So ROM are you saying it is the childrens fault or the education system.

[gaa_ian]

Hey Alex
I do appreciate and share your lament ...However.
There are things we still make (I make/sell a few of them myself)
However I also contract to the resource industry & I have seen the change in that industry where industrial plant up to the size of a 10 story building is bought into Aust by ship, having been made in Thailand, Malaysia Etc in PAM yards (Pre assembled Modules) The quality of these is often dubious, but our government allows this. As for the Kids, it is the responsibility of the PARENT to teach kids the value of Money, Reward for effort & possibly more importantly a political awareness that the future is in their hands.
For my part, I involve my family in my enterprise and seek to teach the skill of self reliance & having a questioning mind.
Good on the Hippys, I grew up in a "Hip Capitalist" family in the 70's and enterprise is in my blood :-)
In the words of Redgum "If you don't fight - You Lose" !

[sn1987a]

No need to worry, all the smart and clever people are working on the robots and intelligent computer systems that will eventually do all the manufacturing everywhere, problem solved. :sadeyes:

[Paul Haese]

It wouldn't matter if people studied more and harder in Australia. Simple economics is at play here. The biggest problem with Australian manufacturing is the cost of labour in general. Even materials that are made here are over priced because of the cost of labour. We cannot compete with countries that can supply labour cheaply.

Australians don't want to work for lower wages and demand all sorts of entitlements and to boot don't work like they should; I know because I have been running a business for 15 years and I have seen it get worse. Korea is one of the few exceptions where high wages and output are matched. Nearly every developed country has this problem now and in the end we the developed world will become the developing world. This will be the cycle of the capitalism. It will always seek the cheapest labour to maximise profit.

So for now labour moves off shore as business owners want to earn profit and manufacturer skill level moves off shore. This is not a government fault either. No government can do anything about this problem. You cannot throw money at this. We have to have a wage adjustment and income adjustment across the board. It has to be wide reaching into all parts of our life including real estate. A decent depression would do the trick and reinvigorate our entire society. We had the chance to do this in 2008 but every government spent up big to prevent a depression. That in my opinion was a mistake for long term viability. It would have meant millions out of work, falling real estate prices, perhaps even high crime rates for quite a while but it would have given us a competitive edge again.

We had this a little during the recession of the 90's, the one we had to have and instigated by the then Hawke/Keating government. We need this again to solve a lot of the problems. Until then manufacture moves off shore and will eventually lead to declining revenues to the point where countries will regress. Comforting thought.

[ZeroID]

I was involved ijn a discussion with a retired elder gentleman ( 'elder' than me that is ;) ) at the weekend. His hobby was RC boating, build, sail, etc etc. He was lamenting the fact it was hard to get new members of a younger ilk interested and when they do they just bought and assembled kitsets. None of them had any skills or proclivity to building from scratch, making their own parts etc.
It seems to be a general trend these days. People have a lot more interests and demands on their lives and so the 'shortcut' is the norm. Instant satisfaction is the answer, buy and try, throw it away, next please. :shrug:
I get much of my astronomical satisfaction from the challenge of building and exploring the technical aspects of the hobby. It it wasn't so I probably wouldn't be anywhere near as committed.
( Hmm, maybe I should be committed anyway ...:P )

[jenchris]

If we get the free trade agreement with China, we'll be competing for jobs with Chinese workers in Australia.
Guess we can say goodbye to our country now and be done. We sure as hell can't compete with China here.

[xelasnave]

Thinking about it much of manufacturing is robotic..we just need more robots

[PeterEde]

I wouldn't call building cars (except those doing design) much of a skill. These people over priced themselves out of jobs. $59K walk in off the street starting pay for assembly line work? :screwy:

WE made our own planes up until the Nomad. WE designed what was said to be the best military trainer in the world but never built it?

Subs are still up in the air. But we may also be building another 8 frigates as well. Still waiting on that news also. Wish they'd hurry up because I work there and want to know if I have a job.



I worked for the alternate tenderer back then. Most we shell shocked when IKEA got the contract. Having said that now after all issues have been sorted I'm pro building Collins evolved. We own the design. We know what it's short coming are.
Or The Germans have said they will build here and cheaper than Japan.

As much as we hear about the Japanese subs being "great" They are not suitable to our needs. Japan has built a submarine suitable for it's needs "Self defense" They are not long range, they have less speed, they are designed for 1/2 the life of Collins. Effectively they will cost more than Collins

[sn1987a]

I'm in manufacturing, we take big rocks and make little rocks which are then exported all over the world. :D

[AndrewJ]

Gday Peter


What part of the alternate tenderer????
I was originally with Lego Engineering, and spent a year in Germany doing facility design etc for the Pt Adelaide site,
only to see the pollies wimp it at the end and choose the other mob.
The Germans had a proven model and proven overseas build techniques, but that didnt seem to matter.
Sometimes i suspect our Govt operates a bit like the pointy haired boss in Dilbert:D

Andrew

[Bassnut]

I worked in Manufacturing automation service, got out just as practically all my customers shut down. As wages in China grow, manufacturing will move to Indonesia, India and Africa, chasing low wages. The answer for Australia is in IP. China essentially has no IP, they are a factory for Wallmart. Australia is good at IP. Our very own Mike Berthon-Jones (Placidus) was a founding member of Resmed, the biggest sleep apnea ventilator machine manufacturer in the world. Mike invented adaptive respiratory ventilators and has some 50 patents to his name. We need more like him with unique IP and we have them lurking awaiting to be supported. The gov does need to provide support though, which is sadly lacking, unlike in the US for instance which has Venture Capitalists willing to take a risk.

I developed a high speed PCB tester in the 90s which beat everything on the market at a fraction of the cost of imported models. It sold very well in OZ, but when I approached the gov for export support, I was basically told to bugger off, so that was the end of that, I just didnt have the rescources to procceed. It may not have come to anything anyway, but the point is if Oz doesnt manufacture anything, then gov support (given we just dont have the size or culture for risky commercial investment) is essential for IP development.

The other factor in manufacturing is automation. The more automated manufacturing becomes, the less manual labour costs count. So automated manufacturing in the future may well return to Oz.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Fred



And maybe a new generation of luddites will then rise to "destroy the mills".
The current economic theories still need millions of little people with disposable income to buy their products.
Automation is a great idea, but unless meaningfull jobs can be found for all the people displaced by the machines, it will eventually come a cropper.


Andrew

[casstony]

Not all young people have the aptitude or interest in going to university. There need to be some middle level jobs between professionals and unskilled and I'm personally happy to have modest subsidies for manufacturers which employ large numbers of workers in order to have a fairer society.

[DavidU]

As a manufacturer/ designer it is very difficult to produce tube amplifiers in Aust, I got the same treatment as Fred with Govt grants/ export assistance.
The huge private capital investment was all I ever got.
I doubt I will ever setup another manufacturing factory again. As for getting my designs made in China....... no thanks.
As for my recent Patent, again the Govt could not care less.

[mswhin63]

No matter what, consumers in Australia are not focused on buying Australian made or Australian supplied or Australian modified solutions.

I attempted to make something that was close to overseas prices but a slight bit more. in a thread which I believe is now archived, the first answer was to support an overseas product :screwy:.

So I kept going for a little while and then can the whole astronomy supply industry.

Is it worth making things, possibly but essentially Australia still have to live on the poverty line to make consumers happy. Will I continue to try? I am not sure. I would like to, but am not confident to pursue it too far.

For the meantime I will make products for myself and that will be about all for the moment.

[Kunama]

It is too easy not to work here in Oz.......
My son-in-law has been advertising for a painter to work for him......
He pays above award rates and is a very easy going boss.

The current guy turns up 3 days out of five,
the previous guys stole tools from the business,
An advertisement on Saturday ..... got one reply and the guy stated that he "was not looking to work too hard and was just fishing about .... "

Yet I hear continually people saying they can't find anything....
I am doing a job at the moment and have a 60 year old assistant who would run rings around any 20-30year old on a building site.

[PeterEde]

Ditto Andrew
I was a pleb in the dwg office and general office boy. My first job after school. I was there for the Island Seaway as well.
Even now given my current employer there are lots of questions over how ASC/Kokums got the contract.
I've been told of under handed deals since between the then Swedish government and ours. Both of the same ilk at the time.

Now we have Collins and would rather see that evolved instead of risking the same night mare again.
Collins today is a world leader. It's quiet. What people call a noisy sub is still quieter than most of the subs. I cold tell some cool stories I've been told but due to sensitive nature of submarines I can't.

[RickS]

Governments are not noted for their ability to pick winners (although they are pretty good at creating losers.) At best they will create an environment conducive to start-ups with reasonable tax treatment of speculative investments and employee stock options.

Cheers,
Rick.

[PeterEde]

Agenda 21? Is it real?
It seems to me most western democracies are keen to forgo the employment of their own people to assist in the employment and economic growth of less fortunate countries.
Why all the FTAs if we produce nothing but raw resources and livestock.
In time as these economies catch up 50-100 years, maybe jobs weill come back to Australia. But we'll be the under dawg by then.

[AndrewJ]

Gday Peter


Ahhh, memories. I almost came back to work on the Seaway, but was stuck in Karratha.
Was "Yobbo" ( G Lear ) still running the drg office then??


What, at rusting at its moorings?????

Andrew

[PeterHA]

Well this is not an easy topic, but here some of the things which I find worth contemplating about:


I often read about Australia being "World Class" in particular areas of industry but the world leaders do rarely share that view.
We have fees for higher education but Scandinavian countries central European countries such as Germany (after a short time with fees) have free higher education and at least in the traditional engineering disciplines outperform us. They learned that payments are associated with an expectation to pass and that money does not equal talent.
Our trade education system does not produce the same average level of competencies other leading countries do.
In modern manufacturing methods like LEAN and TPM the majority of our businesses are behind world best practice.
We have some high performing manufacturers and innovators such as Cochlear but that are our top 5%.

And most important, our remote location and small domestic market makes large scale manufacturing just not viable, not with the current wages.

[PeterEde]

Alan Morris was in charge of the Dwg Office. funny the things you remember.

Collins has reputation that is not warranted. Yes it had problems. Not in manufacture but equipment the then government decided to install.

The boats were quiet by comparison to most other subs. Then they made a few modifications and the things disappear. I hear stories for guys who've crewed them and some of the things they've managed to do are amazing.

Today after the Coles report the maintenance issues have been sorted. Today ASC are a world leader in Sub maintenance. Their biggest let down was in the government over thinking them and buying cheap crap equipment to fit them out with.

Collins in operations is the world beater of conventional submarines and quieter than most nuclear subs

[AndrewJ]

Gday Peter

Hmm, the name rings a bell, but its very dim. Yobbo was in charge when i was there in the early eighties.( He was a grumpy so and so :-) )
IIRC Eric Fletcher was running a lot of it at the time of the Island Seaway.

Anything is quiter than a nuke, we probably should have kept the Oberons.
When we were in germany, we had a whole group dedicated to getting a design that our pollies would buy. At the same time, IIRC the US sent a few admirals over to see if they might buy a few conventional subs, as they needed some "targets" for their nukes to practice against.
Totally different mentality.

Andrew

[gaa_ian]

Hi Malcolm
I am interested, what did you actually make ?
There are I believe lots of people out there who will support an Australian made product & many of them are here on IIS.

[PeterHA]

I will support local made any time if:

The quality is on paar with leading European, Japanese or US products
and

The price matches

[mswhin63]

Cheers Ian,

I made some torches, they were fairly cheap but had Rubylith filter instead of red LED.

After closing operations I made a Bluetooth module for scope connectivity. Considered selling it, although after the response I got from the original message I decided whether dealing to the Australian public was a good option. Canned the whole idea.

Once I finish my Uni exam, I may look at starting the torch again. I am also considering a new type of telescope heating but summers here so going to be hard to sell. It still may not be effective, I still have some more tests to do.

[KenGee]

Look there is an easy fix stop voting for Polly's who are selling us out so they can make a buck.

[PeterEde]

That puts both Libs and Labor out

[gaa_ian]

Well, Australian manufacture and Australian enterprise is alive in my world today. My brand new astronomy website (http://www.nightskysecrets.com.au) has gone live today
:thumbsup:

[RickS]

Good luck with the venture, Ian!

[gaa_ian]

Thanks Rick, my aim is to keep it simple for the entry level person on a budget, and some high quality upgrades. With only quality, tested products. My Range will grow, as I review more products & as demand for those products grows.

[gary]

Hi Ian,

A quick heads-up.

The site's "About Us" page is still at the default and requires editing. (see attached image below).

The customer-service page also is at the default latin gobbledygook.

Best regards

Gary

[gaa_ian]

Thanks Gary, Much appreciated !
My Web Developer is still working on the site (getting all the freight sorted) so I will get that fixed up quick smart.

[el_draco]

The "fault" lies with society as a whole.

I am a teacher, old school for the record.

When we live in a society that tolerates the rubbish we call leadership, pumps our kids with crap food, crap "entertainment" and crap attitudes; idolizes the stupid, and the trivial, we end up with the mess we have.

Our "heroes" are sports types with a minimal of brain function and anything that requires full consciousness and consecutive thoughts is ignored or attacked.

Best teacher in the world cant fight that tidal wave and kids take the easy route out; "I have a learning difficulty; give me a pension"....

I still cant fathom how anyone could be stupid enough to vote for Abbott and his tribe of denialist fools, LET ALONE Lamby :eyepop::eyepop::eyepop:

Gawd save us!!

[xelasnave]

Yes ROM I think our society is of concern.
As to politics I think they are all rather sad.
No doubt you would not miss an episode of Big Brother ...isn't that a great show...well it must be just look at the ratings.
And folk wonder why I am a hermit concerned only with the stars.

[el_draco]

Tend to think you got it right. I have set up my laptop to record the very few things worth watching on the moron box and just bypass the commercials.

Spending more and more of my time up on my mountain. Doc says I should not live up there but I suspect its precisely what I should be doing. Oh, so dark! :D

[Slawomir]

ROM, unfortunately you are spot on. Poor kids have little or no chance to be truly inspired by anything meaningful nowadays...

That's why we can organise stargazing events at school, share with students our attempts at astrophotography, so perhaps a few will catch on and beg their parents to buy them a telescope...when enough kids will get hooked on astronomy, then who knows, maybe it will be like with an iPhone, astronomy will become trendy and popular, and all kids will want/have a telescope, millions of telescopes will be manufactured annually, humanity will start looking at stars again positively shifting its focus away from stupefying entertainment, technology will advance, deep space exploration will become a reality, and I will be able to buy an excellent mount like Mach 1 for under $100... that's the plan anyway... :-)

[xelasnave]

I find my mountain top living a rather healthy way to live.
The weather is more balanced and peace and quite can't be bad.
Drinking rain water I feel also to be best.
Your doctor may just be jealous that you have a mountain.

[el_draco]

Two words. "Street Lights" Cant see the stars in a city and that's where most kids live. If they cant see it and it doesn't change on a 30 second cycle to match the attention span, you lose them; well, most of them anyhow... I call it the "Simpson-Southpark syndrome" :rolleyes:

[el_draco]

Think she's more concerned about the fried circuitry in my heart :lol:

Couldn't give a rats myself :screwy::rofl:

[Slawomir]

You could always try to show them the Moon and the planets and let them play with telescopes- that seems to help in keeping them interested...My school is in Brisbane's CBD and kids love these events. Some kids occasionally go camping too.

[gaa_ian]

I have done many school astronomy sessions.
Yep, there are the kids with the 30 seccond attention spans, huh ...whats this astronomy ...oh look something else shiny.
However there is usually 1 or 2 in a class who are very interested, and for them it is a great affirmation of their interest & might be the spark for a career in science.
For the others, you plant a seed, next time someone might hold their interest for 3 minutes. So begins the awakening of young minds. I encourage anyone who can to get kids looking through telescopes. I have come back years later and had kids remember their experience.

[ZeroID]

I watch extremely little of TV these days, mainly motorsport events (my other passion) and a bit of news is it. Better things to do with my time.

I envy you your mountain and dark skies you're probably in the right place despite what the doc says.

[TrevorW]

There is no such thing as a free lunch somehow the FTA smells and I bet Australian workers will be the losers in the end, so long as China keeps buying our coal and other raw materials. I think the Govt's of the last 2 decades have done their utmost to undermine our national identity.

[xelasnave]

I think manufacturing is important..the pride from ability drives a nation ..I would rate it as a virtue..and yet it escapes us..Is protection ism the only way to foster manufacturing in this country..could better education and support develop manufacture..We can find a solution if it id indeed a problem maybe