How capable are Australia’s manufacturers in delivering sustainment services to Oil & Gas infrastructure? This investment is so vital to our export economy and our way of life.
A recent road trip and several conversations with major Oil & Gas companies about plant sustainment and equipment supply highlighted several issues. A common theme was the importance of maintaining local capability, and more generally, the limited knowledge of what can be serviced by the Australian supply chain. These conversations inspired our Managing Director Louie Chouaifaity to reflect on the sector’s landscape and how much it has changed over the last 35 plus years since LA Services began working in this sector.
Reduction in Capability Awareness
There are perhaps two aspects as to why capability awareness has reduced:
1. The industry’s SMEs are generally not outward-facing and hence fail to provide a market presence that delivers compelling stories about capabilities, workforce skills and in-house knowledge that could improve awareness. 2. The very real decline in capacity (being the number of businesses servicing this specialised infrastructure segment) is potentially perceived as a decline in capability too. Both factors, further compounded with changing procurement strategies over time, seems to have eroded knowledge of the local supply chain.
The Future Strategy
Acknowledging that individual manufacturers need to address their modernisation strategies, the Oil & Gas sector also needs to be thinking about local capability (workshops & personnel) that are available to supply, maintain, modify and repair industrial pressure equipment. Both capacity and capability should perhaps be mapped against the scale and geography of Oil & Gas investments and considered as a sovereign capability or contingency plan for facility owners. Consistently supporting the Australian supply chain would ultimately improve performance, capacity and develop capability, and in doing so deliver assurance that our critical Oil & Gas infrastructure can be supported quickly and effectively if the unexpected happens.
There is much talk about industry collaborating with academia to deliver game-changing products, services and business models in the manufacturing sector. Like many other businesses today, LA Services has been redefining innovation into a meaningful framework and understanding the ‘demons in the technology details’ that will underpin a new era for this sector.
Realising the complexity of digital when applied to an integrity-driven industry that relies on rigours engineering, LA Services engaged with academics to discuss the underlying problems and challenges of applying cyber-physical technologies to the age-old pressure equipment manufacturing industry. Our objective is to enhance the operational uptime of these assets through advanced predictive maintenance analytics.
After more than 12 months of informal meetings over coffee, UTS academics provided clarity on a pathway that could bring these two worlds together with the rigour that is necessary to serve the engineering needs of our products and services. As a result, we are pleased to announce on the 18th July 2019 LA Services signed off on a 12-month research placement project with UTS Faculty of Engineering and IT to develop the data streams, digital interoperability and AI systems that will bring our heritage into the 21st century. This project is supported by an ‘Innovation Connections Grant’, under the ‘Entrepreneurs’ Programme’. It is part of the Commonwealth Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science initiative, set up to drive the development of SME’s like LA Services so they can build the required capabilities needed in an advanced manufacturing environment.
This project follows on from foundational work LA Services did with Western Sydney University through a Tech-Voucher agreement set up by the LaunchPad. Getting to this point with our digital strategy would not have been possible without the support of a vast network of people across business, academia, government and industry bodies.
It is often said in business ‘innovate or die’. However, what does innovation mean or offer a company? Not much in isolation of a context that can make it meaningful to the user. However, if an opportunity comes along to play with a piece of technology, being open-minded to experiment on the fringe of possibilities can be worthwhile. LA Services has been exploring digital applications for a few years now and incrementally finding comfort in getting outside its comfort zone, a change in behaviour that is helping the company to re-think its place in Australian manufacturing.
Leading by example our Managing Director and founder Louie Chouaifaity, while far from comfortable in the VR environment, continues to be open-minded about the possibilities of digital, in an industry context that helps him to become accustomed to the disruptive innovations impacting a sector he has lived and breathed for more than 40 years. So, in the spirit of LA Services’ purpose ‘to lead our industry through innovation,’ he recently immersed himself in unfamiliar technology, so he could step into a familiar environment (a pressure vessel) while catching up with a past industry acquaintance Allen Palmer from IndustrialXR at The Chill Café Wooloowin QLD. While the experience itself may not be innovative, the human connection and enthusiastic conversations about the possibilities that followed over coffee under the tree canopy of this outdoor café, is what underpins the pathway to meaningful innovation and a new frame for comfortable.
It seems like the only constant at present is that the old order of doing things is being challenged in every corner of the economy. While different sectors are dealing with the opportunities of change at varying rates, the responses are primarily within the realm of the relevant industry, bringing some comfort to the change agents. What is interesting in the ‘Future of Work’ proposition, is how enterprises will compete for the best talent as technology and business models blur the lines between once disparate sectors, and hence widens the playing field for attracting top talent. Imagine a manufacturer looking to hire UX or UI design capability to grow a new thread of an advanced manufacturing service, how might this outside industry attract such talent and compete with the incumbent normally engaging these capabilities. Defining the future of work makes for a fascinating conversation that spans everything from how we educate the next generation, to business strategies and re-skilling established talent.
Dr Sean Gallagher says learning and work need to converge to prepare workers for the continuous and rapidly changing work of the digital future.
While this topic was not front and centre for LA Services when it began dabbling in digital in 2016, it quickly became a conversation as we contemplated how our future state may look. So it is not a surprise to us that the ideas raised in Swinburne University’s recent Centre for New Workforce report, title; “Peak Human Potential: Preparing Australia’s Workforce for the Digital Future” are aligned with where LA Services stands today based on its recent digital transition
experiences. In our minds, there is no question a deep digital dive by a traditional business like LA Services will:
a) force a definition around the ‘future of work’ that will influence strategic planning, and
b) change the landscape on what are considered high-value skills versus baseline competencies.
We thought it would be interesting to compare the theory of this recent report with what has been experienced on the ground at LA Services during three years of experimentation with an I4.0 pathway. Here is a summary of what we think, framed around the report’s executive summary content and noting our business context is “a least-disrupted industry” meaning jobs have typically not previously been displaced by digital:
Future-ready Workers
Future-ready workers areunderstood to represent how different workers view skill value and hence job security. Simply put, task orientated (traditional skills) versus the softer social type skills. Our experience is aligned with the results in that traditional expertise are valued far more than social competences by our workforce (a least-disrupted industry). Yet as we map out our manufacturing future it is apparent the knowledge sector workers view of; “collaboration, empathy and social to entrepreneurial skills” will play a lead role in bringing new value to products, services and revenue opportunities. It seems the OECD forecast of a ‘balanced skill set’ will become unavoidable as we transition towards a digitally literate workforce and knowledge markets.
Learning-integrated Work
Learning-integrated Work is a term the report uses to take ‘learning off campus and immerse it into a disruptive work environment, such as an Industry 4.0 setting’ in a quest to meet future learning needs. Reflecting on our last three years, which can be described as an education in ‘intrapreneurship’ framed around wrestling the diversity of I4.0. Our own disruptive learning-integrated work setting has been instrumental in shifting our family SME mindset from ‘not knowing what we don’t know’ to ‘knowing what we don’t know’, and equally important what are the levers we can pull to change the future of the company, depending on succession ambitions and the choices that will underpin strategy.
A new Learning Infrastructure
A new Learning Infrastructure represents the convergence of industry and education working together to bring a new context to our education efforts. Not to say that present educator efforts are not valued, but in our minds, this means adding a layer of application context led by industry. . In reviewing the details of the report, the only difference appears we call it Learning Through Internship (LTI). While this experiment has underpinned many lessons in an industry/education partnership, the test bed is about to evolve, with a UTS led Research Placement Project that will allow us to immerse two LBH interns into this higher learning environment to experience the mathematics, data architecture design, literature review and business planning that will underpin our I4.0 uptake.
Overall the theory represented in this latest Swinburne report has a high degree of correlation to the learning pathways LA Services has formulated through practice, and the views we hold about the future of work as we move towards our advanced manufacturing ambitions. It is another indication to us that academia and the manufacturing industry including SMEs’ are converging on outputs that will begin to restore our industrial commons, and with it create new value that will ultimately improve employment potential and impart a positive social impact community by community.
The Smith Family is an organisation that may not come to mind when thinking about a manufacturing organisation, but then again in today’s business environment, collaboration can present unexpected synergies.
In the last week of May, LA Services had the pleasure of working with The Smith Family and Leonie Lam from My Focus to deliver a module from their Work Inspiration Program, where students from Wiley Park Girl High and Punchbowl Boys High got a glimpse into the career paths and jobs in the changing world of manufacturing.
The session kicked off with a presentation by LA Services General Manager David Fox reflecting on his own career pathway, sharing an insight into what industrial asset manufacturing, and its connection to the gas, water, chemicals and fuels that we all use every day. The group then experienced some of the technologies that are changing the industry such as VR Welding, Mixed Reality through devices like HoloLens and Augmented Reality. A workshop tour was also included to remind students about the importance of traditional trades such as fabrication and welding to make the ‘thing in the Internet of Thing’. The session ended with a series of interview rounds, where the students were able to ask staff questions about the roles they play in manufacturing
We would like to thank Janine Blake, the Beyond School Transition – Project Manager from The Smith Family for making the event easy to coordinate, and our staff who volunteered for the interviews and assisted in organising the morning: Debbie Hinchcliffe – Administration, Jamie Smith – QHSE, Hassan Syed – Projects, Grant Staunton – 3rd year Apprentice Fabricator, Raaid Allam – Design Engineer, Norman Chouaifaity – Operations. We would also like to thank Kirk Duncan from The Mobile Apps Man for providing and supporting the digital technologies, Lincoln Electric Australia for lending their VR welding machine, and Jessica Sarkis from The Animo Affect for her assistance with the student engagement and ongoing support for our youth programs.
Is it worth paying a higher product price for something now when it is a known, or paying for an unknown project cost later?
LA Services works with clients across a number of industries, historically we have serviced the oil and gas sector, a sector with a focus on quality assurance and compliance and rightly so. The processing assets this industry uses, and manufactured by LA Services, are engineered for high risk critical environments typically containing high temperatures, pressures and corrosive or volatile fluids so quality assurance and manufacturing integrity is paramount.
Over time LA Services has witnessed occasions where asset buyers steered away from price certainty by purchasing a ‘cheaper’ product. However, this short-term product price saving can become eroded as repairs or modifications on newly installed equipment requires rectification of non-compliant workmanship. Overall project costs can also escalate when the customer needs to increase their presence in the project management or inspection processes, (to oversee that the work is being done correctly) potentially adding significantly to the original product price.
Our point is there are sometimes costs associated with the risk management of highly engineered purchases that are less likely to be present when purchasing from an experienced local supplier like LA Services.
When large corporates invest with local SMEs it provides opportunity for lasting relationships that reduce business to business costs by building mature supply chains that understand where value resides, which can bring significant project savings over time.
Investing in Australian SME manufacturing companies it also provides opportunity to build a skilled workforce adapt and capable for future maintenance, repairs and upgrades, ensuring a ‘sovereign’ capability underpins the assets and systems Australia has in place and requires to maintain its standard of living and security.
Investing in and working with forward thinking Australian businesses now will save time and money for everyone in the future.
While the business year winds down at the end of this week, staff at Liverpool Boys High are already planning their 2019 project-based learning activities. Jessica Khoury (Community Officer) and Amy Gilchrist (Head Teacher of Science)
visited LA Services this week to discuss a collaborative environment sensor project between Ben Moir from Snepo, David Phan a Big Picture Student at Liverpool Boys High and LA Services under the direction of our graduate engineer Raaid Allam.
The project is being designed as an educational opportunity that will deliver learnings across air quality sensor kit design and manufacture, digital communication, data storage and statistical analysis of factory working conditions mapped over energy and productivity data. The project has been a background discussion with Liverpool Boys and Girls High for some time and will be LA Services first attempt at scaling our industry / education engagement into main stream subjects such as science and math. The objective of the project is to advance LA Services digital skills, deliver visibility across our energy management in the context of production and strengthen our contribution to industry-based STEAM in schools.
We are grateful to the staff at Liverpool Boys High, Ben Moir (Snepo) and Samira Bawden (Liverpool Girls High) for their input over the many months to formulate a project framework that can deliver a meaningful outcome for LA Services, while supporting the industry education bridge that will help to develop the essential skills across our community for advanced manufacturing.
LA Services understands that to improve and move forward sometimes needs a fresh approach, but retention of heritage knowledge and skills is also essential to ensure operational integrity, client trust and longevity of engineering services.
Confronted with the challenge of widening the purpose of our engineering function, LA Services decided this step change required two elements, new blood and a return to first principles that would underpin the application of digital in the engineering design arena.
Raaid Allam a recent Mechanical Engineering Graduate from Macquarie University joined the LA Services team in March 2018 as an intern working on one of our innovation projects. Impressed by his agility to adapt between digital and mechanical he was hired on graduation to lead our push into computer aided engineering.
To ensure Raaid acquired the principle knowledge and skills to design ‘practically engineering’ pressure equipment we needed a weekly focus on design. So, a mentor routine was setup up with legacy designer Allan Bruce and one of our existing younger engineers Hassan Syed. The program is stepping these young engineers through the application of mechanical engineering in the context safe pressure equipment design.
Attention then turned to front loading projects with engineered knowledge, requiring improved project planning and embedding engineering in our tender process. Once again Macquarie University introduced the right resource, Antonio Zanin an Engineer from Italy who was on an exchange, Master of Engineering Management program. Antonio brings a practical background in fabrication, skills across project portfolio management and the application of Microsoft Business Intelligence. Antonio is now working in modelling our project portfolio and supporting tenders.
Together this new blood combine with new digital tools and legacy knowledge is beginning to re-shape the engineering face of LA Services. We look forward to supporting our engineers in developing their craft and in turn they are enhancing our capabilities by helping to advance ‘how we make it’, a necessity in strengthening Australian manufacturing.
On the 21st of November 2018 Jihye Yeo a PhD candidate at the Research School of Management, Australian National University (ANU) visited LA Services to get some insight from the coal face about innovation activity in the Australian advanced manufacturing space.
ihye and her supervisor Dr Alex Eapen (also from the Research School of Management, ANU) are conducting a research project to investigate the drivers of innovation in the Australian Advanced Manufacturing sector. Their research examines cases of manufacturing firms that have successfully transformed themselves into providers of innovative products and services. As adopters of innovative technologies (including but not limited to additive manufacturing, industry 4.0, etc) and new business models, these businesses symbolise the future of Australian manufacturing. Jihye’s research seeks to understand the strategies that have enabled innovation in these firms as well as the catalytic role played by innovation intermediaries in the sector. As such, her research will yield important insights for Australian manufacturing firms that will enable them to improve their innovation processes and outcomes.
Jihye sat down with LA Services’ General Manager David Fox to discuss the various R&D projects currently being pursued across their digital strategy and its industry / education engagement business model, a project that is helping to bring fresh new thinking to how the business approaches both its linear (process improvement) and non-linear (the next curve) innovation activities.
We would like to thank Jihye for taking time to visit our facility and hear firsthand about the experiences and challengers of navigating both Advanced Manufacturing and innovation, and its place in the fabrication and welding landscape.
The scholarship will begin January 2019 and will continue for 3 years (Yr 11, 12 & first year of uni), providing him with financial assistance ($7000) and linking him with a professional mentor that will guide him in setting and achieving goals. There were only 30 successful students out of 300 applicants.
Access to David’s passion-based learning environment, which includes a long-term internship with LA Services, is due to David’s commitment to learn, the outstanding leadership of Liverpool Boys High and their teaching staff that have all embraced the Big Picture Education program, making it possible to build a meaningful bridge between the classroom and industry for students from year 9 onward. The synergy of this relationship is allowing David to stretch his intellectual capacity beyond what might be possible in a traditional school setting and in the process developing skills to deal with real world challenges in preparation for his chosen career path (software engineer).
LA Services congratulate David and his Big Picture advisors for their efforts in this achievement.
