Jan 18, 2018  -  About 50 workers are set to lose their jobs after a prominent plastic card manufacturer has proposed moving operations to Australia. ABCorp have informed workers of their intention to close their plastic card manufacturing plant in Christchurch by as early as 30 March, after a three-week consultation process.

Jan 16,  2018  - Airbus has strengthened its position following a record year for jet sales, extending an order lead over rival manufacturers such as Boeing.  The European company booked contracts for 1,109 airliners in 2017, Airbus announced, widening its margin over its US competitor to 197.

Jan 10, 2018  -  Les Rapchak who has over four decades of experience in the compressed air field and over thirty years in specialty compressed air products, the Nex Flow™ brand has become a worldwide name with global sales. During 2017, Les made a commitment of getting information about health and safety benefits of thousands of Pneumatic products.  Utilizing the power of his LinkedIn profile he was able to provide hundreds of articles on important topics to his nearly 30,000 followers.

Jan 10, 2018  -  Miller Electric, a manufacturer of arc welding equipment, is expanding its ClearLight Lens Technology to all digital welding helmets. ClearLight enhances clarity for welding operators so they can produce better welds with less rework.

Jan 9, 2018  -  After receiving national and international acclaim in 2017 for several products in its expanding portfolio, New Zealand pet food manufacturer, Ziwi, is preparing for strong continued growth in 2018. 

Jan 9, 2018  -  When aircraft manufacturers today are faced with a problem in a plane that has been in service for many years, they encounter a significant challenge “ tracing the history of the suspected part or component and chronology of events surrounding it to find the right fix. These could be issues or damages fixed right from the manufacturing process, flight test observations, customisations by lease operators, maintenance observations and changes, damages due to in-flight incidents such as a hard landing or bird strike and pilot logs from in-flight observations and issues.

All this data is spread out in multiple systems across organisations in the supply chain, and data gathering and reconciliation becomes an extremely challenging exercise. Some airlines spend as much as 90% of the time and effort finding and organising the data chronologically, and only 10% of time in finding the fix. And the aircraft are grounded during this time - massive revenue loss for an industry with high asset utilization targets.

Now imagine the savings that would be possible, if there were a system of records that brought together all of the information from all of these sources in one place, all organised in chronological order. With such a system, aircraft could be back in the air within just 20% of the time taken earlier. Enter blockchain!

By enabling all the parties to share their data on a common network as and when the data is generated, and using a common identifier for a part or component that lets the entire history be traced, blockchain could just be the solution to this challenge.

The manufacturing industry is experiencing significant transformation as blockchain streamlines processes and brings accountability among stakeholders. The technology is a powerful recorder of transactions enabling provenance tracking of goods and its movement through the supply chain.

Organisations today face challenges in coordinating with their stakeholders in the value chain, due to information asymmetry caused by silo-ed databases, resulting in inaccurate forecasts and delays due to insufficient inventory. In a globalised world, organisations procure and sell goods in different parts of the world. Their partners in the supply chain have increased exponentially, raising the need for a single source of truth.

Consumers also demand products that are crime-free, sustainable and of the highest quality. The ability to validate the ethical production of products and to trace its origin not only provides transparency, but also increases brand loyalty, brand value and revenue.

Blockchain has come to be recognised for its potential to create a fundamental, disruptive shift in the way information is processed, making them faster, accurate and tamper-proof. Organisations are recognising the inevitable force of this technology, and its ability to build an ecosystem that would transcend geographical barriers, its automation capabilities and the enormous cost benefit.

While Blockchain offers enormous potential, manufacturing companies need to leverage it in chosen business areas, where the impact of this technology is the most.

The aerospace industry is one of the sectors which stands to gain a lot from blockchain. Blockchain has various applications in the aerospace industry, such as supply chain management enabling stakeholders to trace the sub-components back to its manufacturers and access its quality details.

It also helps the stakeholders to streamline their inventory management by tracking the production of assets and the monitoring the inventory of their suppliers and customers. And as mentioned earlier, it can help quickly provide aeronautical engineers access to the history of the aircraft, and the damage and repairs to help accurately identify the problem and design the solution for the aircraft. Other Blockchain applications include:

Supply Chain Management

Inventory Management: OEMs procure goods from across the world to meet the demands of local customers, but stakeholders in the same city do not have the information required to plan their procurement and production activities.

Blockchain promises to end the struggle to coordinate between stakeholders in the value chain by bringing them on a single platform and creating a sole source of truth. Blockchain helps track products as they move along the supply chain providing real-time inventory updates to all the stakeholders. This helps manufacturers plan their procurement and production activities.

Provenance Tracking: Customer awareness has resulted in the need for organic food, crime-free and environmentally-sustainable products. Customers can use the blockchain to trace products and its constituents back to its origins. They can view quality certificates and certifications from third parties to verify the sustainability or ethical practices of the company.

The airline industry needs to track several components within a part or section of the plane. The ability to track components of a section and verify its presence is crucial for the airline industry. Blockchain helps the airline industry account for every component and assigns accountability among its suppliers for missing parts creating safe skies for all air travelers.

Counterfeit Prevention

Manufacturers struggle to stop the global supply chain fraud and leakage, which accounts for losses of over $300 billion per year. By tracking products through the supply chain, organisations can ensure counterfeit products do not enter the supply chain and provide customers a tamper-proof record of the product's lifecycle to verify authenticity.

Blockchain enables aerospace industry to track products through the value chain, thus preventing counterfeits from entering the market and enabling customers to verify the authenticity of the product.

Equipment Automation

Smart contracts on the blockchain can be used to automate payment to suppliers and service providers. They can also be used to automate equipment to perform functions at specific instances. Sensors on equipment can capture data which can be used to certify the quality of products or smart contracts can stop production of faulty products if an anomaly is detected.

Equipment Maintenance Tracking

By tracking equipment procurement and their breakdown, blockchain enables manufacturers to trace faulty components back to their suppliers and reduce the downtime of production facilities.

In the airline industry, for instance, blockchain could help track aircraft through production, servicing and its entire lifecycle tracking parts usage and damage history. Data can then be made available for damage detection, analysis and repair of parts.

The manufacturing industry is on the verge of a blockchain revolution. By connecting every company and every customer it helps create greater transparency and trust and enable businesses all over the world. As more and more companies deploy blockchain in their supply chain, an ecosystem free from information asymmetry and counterfeiting seems a real possibility.

Source:  Deccan Herald (The writer is Vice President and Head of Center for Emerging Technology Solutions at Infosys)  |  December 24, 2017   |||

Jan 4, 2018  -  HSV’s final Holden Commodore-based model is a 2017 GTSR W1.  Australia’s semi-official tuner to Holden, HSV, has made a name for itself over the past three decades by churning out meaty muscle cars based on successive generations of rear-wheel-drive, V-8-powered Holden Commodores. All of that has come to an end, however, as HSV on Wednesday announced the construction of its final Commodore-based model.

Dec 22, 2017 - Allbirds, the merino wool shoe company co-founded by former New Zealand soccer star Tim Brown, has expanded into its third global market, launching in Australia last month, and it’s eyeing up more markets for next year.

San Francisco-based Allbirds started selling its minimalist woollen sneakers direct to consumers in March 2016 and has online operations in the US and New Zealand, shops in San Francisco and New York, and a steady stream of pop-up outlets. It began selling online in Australia on Nov. 21 in response to customer demand from the world’s biggest merino producing country.

Dec 20, 2017  -  It will be a sad day for Dunedin as 85 permanent, full-time Cadbury confectionary workers end their employment with the company, effective Friday.   The loss of their jobs ends many years of collective contribution to an iconic Dunedin institution, and “there will be tears and sadness, as people realise it’s over,” says E tū delegate and Sub-branch Vice President, Teresa Gooch.

“Many will look back on years of camaraderie and really, the good times of working at Cadbury where workmates have been like family. Cadbury has been good to us. There is a real feeling of loss, so there will be grieving,” she says.

“It’s also hard for those of us who will still be working here – we know we’re next and we’re also feeling for our departing friends.

“Some have found jobs and gone already, but many others are very anxious.”

However, Teresa says people need to stay positive.

“I would urge people to have some faith about where they go from here. A lot of employers are keen to take on the Cadbury workers due to their committed work ethic, reliability and service to the company. These are wanted workers.

“As long as they’re active and positive there’s a good chance they’ll get a job somewhere.”

E tū Industry Coordinator Food, Phil Knight says the union remains concerned over the demise of many good quality jobs, especially in provincial centres like Dunedin.

“These have been good, permanent, full-time jobs and those aren’t always easy to find. We know some people are leaving Dunedin to get into jobs so it’s very disruptive,” he says.

| An E tū release  ||  December 20, 2017   |||

Dec 15, 2017  _  Why Hermpac chose Flow Software for EDI…  When its trading partners requested electronically-submitted invoices, building supplies manufacturer Herman Pacific looked to Flow Software to provide the necessary integration. In a low-touch solution, the company now seamlessly interfaces with the various enterprise resource planning systems used by its major vendors, with the efficiency and performance advantages it enjoys also extending to its partners.

Herman Pacific – or Hermpac – is New Zealand’s leading manufacturer and supplier of specialty timber products. Established in in 1974 with a simple promise, ‘quality first and second to none’, the privately and 100 percent locally owned company operates out of a 9-acre facility in Silverdale, north of Auckland, with further sales and warehousing facilities in both Wellington and Christchurch. In addition to its flagship Western Red Cedar timber, Hermpac offers over 15 different hardwood and softwood options, matched with a range of solutions from the ground up: flooring, decking, weatherboard, cladding, mouldings and paneling.

| SituationWith the march of time, the old methods of handling business administration are replaced with the new. Greg Crawford, Hermpac’s group accountant, explains that the major merchants with which the company works, updated their policies to require all invoices to be submitted electronically. “Previously, we were sending invoices by printing and posting them. This is a business process which we are increasingly seeing digitised for very good reasons, as it reduces errors, lowers costs and results in a much faster delivery of the paperwork,” he notes.

The merchants to which he refers are the large retailers and trade suppliers of building supplies across New Zealand such as Placemakers, ITM, Carters, Mitre10 and Bunnings. “Using the postal system is increasingly inefficient and the time taken for processing on our side and that of the customer isn’t good enough. All our major merchants want a similar sort of thing, with invoices going directly into Accounts Payable and lining up with order processing. It means they don’t need people keying in information and it reduces the chances of mistakes.”

| SolutionWhile a point-to-point integration doesn’t present any major challenges, the picture does get more complex when considering the multiple ERP systems in use by various customers, says Crawford. “Each of our major merchants uses a different system and we need to integrate with all of them,” he points out.

However, he says with Flow Software’s experience, addressing each integration has proven a surprisingly simple, low-touch task.

He explains a typical integration: “We get a Message Information Guide (MIG) pack from the merchant which details their requirements – and Flow generally already has that anyway. We pass over the contact details of the merchant as well as the people who support our Dynamics SL ERP [Adaptable Consulting].”

Flow’s technical people installed their middleware software at Hermpac, and within Dynamics SL, Adaptable created several views which were accessed by Flow’s technicians. “Those views come from our SQL database and are dumped into the Flow server, which checks every 10 minutes or so for invoices which are then sent to our customer by EDI.”

Getting it done, Crawford again notes, took very little effort aside from coordination between Flow and Adaptable Consulting. “And there was already a working relationship there – so engaging with a trusted partner with a proven track record really made this easy, with basically the same process for every one of our customers which wanted invoice integration.”

He has praise for the flexibility of Flow’s integration and the lateral thinking of its people; one customer required a feed of electronic purchase orders into Hermpac’s systems before invoices could be sent the other way. But there was a problem, as Crawford explains: “We didn’t want the PO going directly into our systems, as when we are supplying specialty timber solutions, it has to be carefully checked to be sure the right product is selected. If it is wrong, it must be corrected, cancelled and resent, creating an administrative overhead.”

Flow created a workaround, which saw the incoming POs captured and held, allowing for evaluation, before continuing the process. To the merchant, the process is seamless, while for Hermpac, there is no need to worry about incorrectly specified orders going into its systems.

| ResultsIntegrating with its trading partners, say Crawford, has gone off without a hitch. “For each EDI implementation, Flow asks for sample orders, sets them up as tests in the system and works with the recipients. When all parties are happy with the testing, we get an OK, go live and we haven’t had an issue.”

With the first such go live in February 2016, and a further three merchants since the original integration and a fifth being added at present, he says Hermpac has had ample opportunity to test the reliability and durability of the Flow integrations.

Electronic integration, Crawford says, dramatically accelerates invoice processing while eliminating the costs of printing, paper and postage. “Customers get their invoices a lot quicker. We save time and money. And it is more reliable.”

Which isn’t to say all Hermpac’s customers are receiving EDI invoices. Some prefer an emailed PDF document, while others still prefer snail mail. He says the company’s systems are set up to provide options for the preferred mechanism of information exchange depending on individual requirements.

Asked if he would go through the process of invoice EDI again, Crawford has no hesitation. “If it was with Flow I would. They have the expertise, they understand this well and they made it work without any headaches or issues. And their lateral thinking is of great value.”

| Source:  Flow Software  ||  December 15, 2017   |||