What's it all about
What is innovation in manufacturing?
Manufacturing is a critical component of South Australia's economic base. However, manufacturing is undergoing transition and in certain circumstances, a structural adjustment process is required by companies. South Australian manufacturers, like others across the world are increasingly competing on value instead of cost and are ‘moving up the value chain'. They need to compete on knowledge throughout the entire supply chain of products, processes and services.
During his residency, Professor Roos provided assistance to companies to handle complexity in various aspects of their business, and presented a range of flexible business models and provide examples of how the latest technologies are being used internationally. Professor Roos worked directly with South Australian companies and and participated in a range of activities including lectures, workshops and seminars relating to global manufacturing, business model innovation, strategic technology and regional innovation systems.
One of the key approaches was a set of workshops with selected firms to illustrate how to implement the innovation in all areas of the business. This approach provided the benefits of:
- delivering a clear outcome for these firms
- provide an opportunity to cascade the know-how by using these firms as case examples and points of contact for other firms
- provide an opportunity to document the approach with the assistance of PhD students or similar from the local universities
- provide a basis for a publication around the approach, for the firms that were not participating but would like to do so
- provide an opportunity for the training of people (academics/consultants etc) in the approach.
Anticipated outcomes of this residency for the State include:
- diversification into new markets, in particular defence equipment, resources technology, cleantech, healthcare and medical equipment;
- increased investment leading to productivity in manufacturing processes, advanced materials, enabling technologies and intellectual property;
- new niche markets identified in global supply chains;
- solutions to environmental and climate change problems; and
- increased collaboration - company to company as well as company to universities / research organisations.
Göran Roos and Andrew Downs from SAGE Didactic