Professor Goran Roos

As well as being the Thinker in Residence for South Australia, Professor Goran Roos is considered one of the 20 most significant thinkers of the 21st Century. This morning he was presenting his views on Australian Manufacturing to a combined breakfast meeting of the South East Business Network and SEMMA.

So what did I learn?

Here is the short list on what manufacturing does for an economy:

• R&D is driven by it
• Innovation is primarily manufacturing related
• Value added exports are usually manufactured
• Creates more indirect jobs per direct job than other sectors
• Many service companies have a manufacturing core
• Is the fastest knowledge growth domain
• Is essential for a highly competitive economy

His primary point is that “A healthy manufacturing sector is a must for any advanced economy with ambitions to maintain both economic and social wellbeing“.

Now he has my attention big time. Because this is something I have inherently believed my entrie working life. Australia needs manufacturing.

Manufacturing creates employment

Next  he looked at the contribution of manufacturing to employment and why we have employment issues in Australia. Yes I know the official unemployment figure is low, but that is because many people looking for work are not included in the official figure. So here is how is pans out for employment:

• For each manufacturing job, there are 2.5 other jobs created around it
• In Australia where there are 1 million jobs in manufacturing, that means there are 3.5 million jobs in total associated with manufacturing
• For each working person, there is a dependent person relying on them for income. These can be relatives, children, spouse etc.
• So in total there are 7 million people in Australia dependent on manufacturing

Now lets look at mining:

• For each mining job, there is another job created around it
• In Australia where there are 200 thousand jobs in mining, that means there are 400 thousand jobs in total associated with mining
• For each working person, there is a dependent person relying on them for income. These can be relatives, children, spouse etc.
• So in total there are 400 thousand people in Australia dependent on mining

So the current government policies and industry practices of reducing manufacturing and increasing mining for direct export are actually economic suicide.

The service industry is even worse for indirect job creation though it does employ more people than mining ever will:

• For each service industry job, there is  0.5 jobs created around it
• The ABS statistics for 2010 show roughly 3 million people working in service industries in total including the 0.5 jobs created
• For each working person, there is a dependent person relying on them for income. These can be relatives, children, spouse etc.
• So in total there are 6 million people in Australia dependent on service industry jobs

What this means is that manufacturing is actually the most critical sector in Australia in terms of job creation and future prosperity.

 So lose manufacturing, and you lose a huge number of jobs.

The USA has shed 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000, primarily to offshoring manufacturing to lower cost economies. These jobs were replaced by low paying personal service jobs. The net result is record levels of unemployment and a trade deficit in every manufacturing category.

He also spoke of the hidden categories, particularly in industrial products, that lead to high export incomes and have been strength of many European Manufacturers. The following diagram shows the  attributes that make these products possible. Note that 4 are to do with knowledge, and 4 to do with strucutre and relationship. This implies you need both.

Invisible Middle Market

Economic Growth and Competitiveness

Economic growth is a measure of how well you have been doing up to now. It is a meaure of the past performance. It applies to yesterday.

Competitiveness is a measure of how well you will keep doing. It is a measure of likely performance. It applies to tomorrow.

So it is more important for the future to be positioned to be competitive, than it is to have had past economic growth. Ideally you will have both.

Some examples of countries that are highly ranked for competitiveness and also economic growth are:

• China
• Singapore
• Switzerland
• Sweden
• Finland

That was a surprise.  Australia ranks at number 15 for competitiveness and growth according to this analysis. The red line is the frontier of highest competitiveness. Australia is a long way from it.

Future Economic Success

Innovation

Goran Roos also had an interesting take on innovation and this fits in nicely with the view of Edward De Bono on Creating Value. He defines 2 types of innovation that are required to addess Australia’s lack of competitiveness:

• Innovate to create value
• Innovate to retain value

Based on this, offshoring is a really bad idea. It is only done to reduce overheads for cost based activities. For value based activities where we retain the value anhd the income from that value in Australia, we should be onshoring!

Knowledge

Manufacturing is the fastest knowledge growth domain. This is an interesting claim and one that had a case put for it to demonstrate the validity. Here is the case:

• Manufacturing generates 15 times the knowledge that mining does per unit of economic activity
• Manufacturing generates 3 times the knowledge that service industries do per unit of economic activity

Professor Goran Roos also pointed out that knowledge is like a race. If you slow down for a bit, then you can’t catch up if the other runners keep going full steam ahead.

Onshoring

It now makes sense that mining for export is not that great an option. Take something of huge potential value, and give it away at the lowest point you can in the value chain.

Onshoring means we pull value creating back in Australia so we get paid for it. And making stuff, and providing the service industries to support that should be our primary strategy for the future.

The other point Professor Goran Roos made is that Australia is not a scale based economy. We don’t have a large local market by world standards and so we should focus on product categories which do not require scale. Or in my language: lower volume, higher value add products. This is also know as Niche Electronics Manufacture.

Thinker in Residence

His speech on the future of South Australian manufacturing is also worth watching and listening too. Here it is:

 All graphics are Copyright (C) Goran Roos 2011.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

I went to the open day for the Australian Synchrotron at the Monash Science Park on Sunday. As a member of SEMIP I already knew about the Australian Synchrotron but had never actually visited it. I am very glad I did.

Australian Synchrotron

On the open day I went to 2 sessions. The first was titled “Synchrotrons for Dummies” which was very well presented and gave a good overview of the Australian Synchrotron but more importantly, gave excellent examples of how it is used and what it can be used for.  Here is a short list from one of their brochures, by no means exhaustive:

• Improving fertility
• Examining forensic evidence
• Helping premature babies breathe without getting lung damage
• Improving energy storage
• Improving industrial processes
• Nano-scale material science
• Improving cement

The Australian Synchrotron uses very high energy electrons to create electromagnetic radiation that can be used to either select specific frequencies for analysing, or for getting access to much higher energy or finer resolution imaging. It runs 24 hours a day when in operation and multiple experiments can be run at the same time on what they refer to as Beamlines. Each Beamline can run in parallel with the others as they are independent. The higher energy allows better penetration and the finer resolution which means you can go down to features comparable to a single molecule. So you can think of it as either:

• A very bright light (1 million time brighter than the sun before you filter it back to what you want)
• A very high resolution microscope
• A very high resolution and finely tuned X-Ray imaging system

The Australian Synchrotron website has an excellent set of explanations including How the Synchrotron Works.

Synchrotron Science

The second session was on Synchrotron Science and included a detailed guided tour through the entire complex starting from the electron gun where the initial 90KeV electrons are generated then into the booster ring where the energy is kicked up by a factor of over 30,000 and finally through to the main storage ring where they are circulating at 3GeV energy and as close to the speed of light as we know how to make them.  In fact, they are going so fast that adding more energy makes them heavier just as Einstein predicted. The energy and the equipment involved are staggering. I was reading the individual steering magnet ratings and they are water cooled 6KW devices. And there are hundreds of them, all colour coded according to their specific function.

Australian Synchrotron Science

The guided tour included both a detailed up close view of the equipment and also a trip over the top to see the complex from above.  The entire device is the size of a football oval.

Australian Synchrotron Science Valves

Beam Time

And the commercial arrangements are very attractive. If you have a great idea for a project and it meets the selection criteria, it costs you nothing. If not, you can rent Beam Time as they call it for $400 per hour and usually get a slot within 8 weeks. Given that this is a $300M device, that is an absolute bargain.

Australian Synchrotron Open Day

Now I am thinking about what my clients might be able to do with this amazing facility.

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

In 2010 we were also finalists for Casey Manufacturer of the Year and we achieved that again in 2011 at the Casey Business Awards.

Casey Manufacturer Of The Year Finalist 2011

Our congratulations go to Rex Vandenberg and the team at Injectronics for their win as Casey Manufacturer of the Year 2011. Very much deserved and a classic example of an Innovative Australian Electronics Manufacturer.

For those who know us well, we are not primarily an Electronics Manufacturer but provide the Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development for new or improved products for Australian Electronics Manufacturers. Another way of saying this is that we are R&D, Research and Development, for hire. And we sometimes also handle production logistics where that suits our clients since we have all the contacts and know all the processes. So I was very pleased to be recognised for how good our Electronics Manufacturing capability really is. Manufacturing is the largest economic sector in Casey and we were recognised as being in the top 3 manufacturers at the Casey Business Awards in 2011. This is also a good reason why the clients we serve end up with outstanding Electronics Designs that are well suited to Low Cost Electronics Manufacture; we understand Electronics Manufacturing.

Now if only they had a category for Electronics Design …

Casey Business of the Year 2011

MadCap Cafe

Congratulations to MadCap Cafe for their win as Casey Business of the Year for 2011. As winners of Casey Business of the Year 2010 we know what a boost this can be to a business and I particularly liked their focus on making coffee to provide employment and opportunities to those suffering from mental illness.

Electronics Design

From the team at Successful Endeavours, recently recognised nationally for our Electronics Design capability with a win for Electroncis News Future Award: Industrial Electronics, we would like to thank our suppliers, clients and supporters for being part of the journey of supporting Australian Electronics Manufacturers in 2011. And the year isn’t over yet!

Electronics Design Team at Successful Endeavours

Successful Endeavours specialise in Electronics Design and Embedded Software Development. Ray Keefe has developed market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Casey Business Awards

Casey Business Awards 2011

Shar Balmes Mayor of Casey

Paul Higgins aka Futurist Paul

Manufacturer Of The Year

• source all the components including electronics components, case, labels, batteries and machined and LASER cut items
• get the PCBs loaded (we can handle small quantities in house but once you get over 30 PCB sets it becomes cheaper to use a dedicated SMT line)
• program, test and calibrate the loaded PCBs
• fit labels to the front chassis and then fit all the connectors, indicators and switches
• fit the battery to the case
• assembly the unit including the seals (this is an IP65 rated product)
• apply serial numbers
• final assembly and test then pack in shipping cartons with labels and matching serial numbers
• ship to client who then sells them direct to their customers

ABB CQ900R Smart Controller

We are very excited to announce that we have won another major award. This time it is for the Electronics News Future Awards for 2011 in the category of Industrial Electronics with Best Industrial Electronics Application.

Electronics News Future Awards

In 2011 the awards are followed up by a roundtable discussion on the future of Australian Electronics. As a passionate support of Australian Electronics Manufacturers this is something I would have been keen to attend even if we hadn’t of won one of the awards.

Details on the Electronics News Future Awards categories and the entry process are available at Recognising Innovation.

And our thanks go to our clients, suppliers and supporters for your ongoing faith in us.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile at Ray Keefe. This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

Have you ever wondered just how green an iPhone really is?

Well today’s blog post was sent to me by Dr Marc Dussault, The Exponential Growth Strategist. It’s an Infographic taken from DailyInfographic.com. At Successful Endeavours, we’re always interested in recycling and sustainable technologies and solutions. You will have seen some of that is past posts on how to be greener with the Electronics Design including Electronics Design for Green Manufacture? , Green Electronics Strategies – Reduce Power While Awake and Green Electronics Strategies – Sleep Saves Energy .

For this post we will use the infographic to specifically look at how GREEN the iPhone 4 is versus the iPhone 3G from the perspective of the production, use and disposal of the phone.  Some key figures I noted or calculated are:

• Production Emissions are 57% of all emissions in the iPhone 4 product lifecycle
• 58.9% of the weight of the iPhone 4 is in materials that are easily recycled
• Packaging Reductions save 14% in transport fuel

The Packaging Reductions are an excellent example of simple things we can all do to save on emissions. And Apple offer a full recycling service that is aimed at being environmentally friendly which is also a great thing to put in place.

Electronics Manufacturing Energy

The area that stands out for me is the energy that is consumed in production of the iPhone 4. This is not an iPhone 4 specific problem but a general problem for Electronics Manufacture. If we want to talk about Green Electronics, then this has to include not just the product we use and the Electronics Waste and Recycling / WEEE, but we also have to get to the point where the Production Emissions, the energy to produce a product, is way less than the energy to use the product. This is a huge issue for Battery Operated Products, such as the emerging Electric Vehicle market, where the Production Emissions for just the battery can be close to half of all the Production Emissions.

Enjoy the infographic from the dailyinfographic Keeping it Green.

How Green is the iPhone 4

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile at Ray Keefe. This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd

10 years ago, LED Lighting was set to revolutionise the general illumination market. LEDs, also known as Light Emitting Diodes, had already taken over are the role as indicator panel illuminators and user interfaces on industrial, commercial and consumer products.  All the trend lines indicated that they would eclipse the incandescent light globe for cost per watt within a decade.

So what went wrong?

LED Lighting - Purple LED Diffused

More power without more light

As the technology was scaled up, the power levels rose and the expected requirements of more heatsinking were being dealt with and all seemed on track for LEDs to take over the world of lighting. But then a snag was hit. The technology got to a point where the efficiency dropped off as more current flowed through the diode. Companies like CREE, LumiLEDs and OSRAM pursued different and moderately successful strategies to try and overcome these limitations but the pace of progress slowed dramatically.

All of this points to a technical barrier we still don’t fully understand but are chipping away at.

Same light less cost

The other issue is the cost per watt in terms of the manufacturing cost of LEDs. The manufacturing process typically uses Sapphire or Silicon Carbide substrated which makes LEDs more expensive to manufacture than conventional semiconductors.  There are several ways to improve this and they are all being pursued in parallel.

The first is the move toward organic semiconductors as covered in my recent post on Printed Electronics I looked at much lower cost techniques for making semiconductors and organic LEDs are one of the possible end products from these techniques. The CSIRO are world leaders in these technologies and are actively pursuing research into flexible electronics including organic displays and lighting. Here the challenge is creating a robust manufacturing technique that produces high volume, low cost lighting. The efficiency may not be as high but the cost per watt is much lower. Organic Semiconductors and organic LEDs will continue to be part of the solution. You can read about their efforts in CSIRO Flexible Electronics.

CSIRO Flexible Electronics

The second move is toward reducing the costs of conventional LED manufacture by eliminating the more costly steps of the process. A recent breakthrough was announced by Bridgelux and reportied in IEEE Spectrum will permit the manufacture of LEDs on silicon substrates.  In Silicon Is Key to Quest for $5 LED Lightbulb the breakthrough is described and the promise is good. This also does not address the efficiency problem but again reduces the cost per watt.

Bridgelux Silicon Substrate LED

Efficiency is the final frontier

The final chapter is yet to be written because the breakthrough we have all hoped for has not yet arrived. In the meantime the problem is being tackled from many sides and advances are being made on multiple technical fronts. LED lighting is an important part of the strategy to reduce our Carbon Footprint.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile at Ray Keefe. This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

Electronics products almost invariably have a Printed Circuit Board , PCB, on the inside. This is one of the most common things we do, designing the Printed Circuit Board on the inside on the product. Now designing a Printed Circuit Board so it works correctly is one thing, but if you are going to make them cost effectively in volume then you have to consider the manufacturing options at your disposal. To achieve Low Cost Electronics Manufacture requires every aspect of the design to be considered. The following video covers the basic issues very well:

So the things to focus on are:

• Use SMT as much as possible,
• Reduce the number of components by using more highly integrated circuits,
• Reduce the variety of components so the number of reels is reduced,
• Ask the PCB loader about their standard panel sizes.  If you can adjust the PCB size to suit them then it will reduce their costs,
• Work with component types that the PCB loader can handle
• Work with components that you can buy in suitable quantities

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile at Ray Keefe. This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

There are a lot of processing steps that go into the Electronics Manufacture of a Light Emitting Diode or LED. OSRAM have released a video showing the processing steps that go into making an LED.  Check it out below.

The LED increasingly becomes the light source of choice for most lighting applications as we look to Reduce Energy Use and our Carbon Footprint.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile at Ray Keefe. This post is Copyright © 2011  Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.