After tackling water and energy last year, Siemens turns the spotlight on Australia’s productivity in its Picture the Future Series. According to Siemens, this is one of the largest industry based meta-research studies in the nation’s history.
There aren’t many surprises and the picture isn’t pretty: Australia’s rate of productivity has been in decline by approximately 1.2 per cent per year since 2003-04. One of the fixes advocated revolves around automation and digitalisation.
"Digitalisation enables far better capture of data in real time. It also allows for extremely fast iterations in terms of design. If you have a fully digitalised and automated system, you can cut your time from design to product by half and this is what will improve productivity," Matthew Rait told Manufacturers’ Monthly.
Rait is Head of Productivity Research, Picture the Future Australia at Siemens.
Mining is an area of concern with productivity in this sector declining 4.6 per cent since 2003-04. "The real concern is how the economy will prosper beyond the mining boom – and booms are cyclical. Historically, they don’t end well," says Rait who would like to see our economy thrive off green industry.
He believes manufacturers ought to be looking at what can they do to improve their productivity from a green perspective because once the carbon taxes imposed, that’s going to cost money. "We need to improve our productivity to absorb these costs," he stresses.
According to Siemens research, digitalisation and automation will enable flexibility within the manufacturing environment. "We will then be able to adapt quickly to market changes and also handle the high level of customisation demanded by customers," notes Rait. "It also hits one of our other solution areas, which is environmental sustainability."
Things like Smart Grid Smart Management System are expected to place less pressure on the environment, on raw materials and enable sustainability.
Following on from their PLM solutions, Siemens are now promoting Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) which has a common level protocol for communications between systems enabling continuous manufacturing optimisation. "Both PLM and TIA are enablers for improving productivity," says Rait.
To action and implement the Picture the Future proposals, Siemens have expressed a willingness to work with other companies in "collaborative innovation" thereby allowing a spread of risk, a spread of cost and a spread of IP.
Stripped of pretty pictures and noble sentiment, what can the country expect from this laudable initiative? "When we look at it from a national perspective, we will be able to see shifts in our productivity performance over time," reckons Rait. "We will be able to measure the shifts at each industry level and we can see whether these visions are making a positive difference."
Siemens is certainly not alone when voicing concerns over the challenge of over regulation. "To accomplish our vision, it is absolutely necessary for us to somehow work through and rationalise some of the restrictions that are the consequence of a three-tier government – such as the 1,300 regulatory bodies we have across those levels," concludes Rait.
Image: Matthew Rait is Head of Productivity Research, Picture the Future Australia at Siemens.
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