QLD & NSW Autumn Newsletter 2019

QLD & NSW Autumn Newsletter

Welcome to our first newsletter for 2019. With one of the hottest and driest Summer’s on record finally coming to an end, I’m sure many of you are welcoming the cooler temperatures of Autumn. You'll see from the stats throughout the newsletter that it was an exciting quarter at SIRF.

We ended the year with a fantastic selection of our best speakers at the Senior Leaders Day and we have kicked the year off with some terrific common interest work groups. A special thank you to Brad Jeavons from Winson Group who enabled our first Continuous Improvement Senior Leaders breakfast in QLD which was such a great success. It will be the first of many so keep your eye out for more of these specialised events in both States.

Hannah Watts
Customer Support & Event Manager

Notable highlights for this quarter in QLD & NSW

We welcomed 5 new companies as SIRF members, ran 16 events which 280 people attended and was represented by 80 different companies.

QLD Joint Rt | Senior Leaders Day

Another fantastic year for SIRF came to a close in Queensland with our third Leadership Presentation day, bigger and better than previous years at the Brookwater Golf Club.

We had an incredible mix of senior leaders from all aspects of industry attend, great food and knowledge transfer.

On the guest speaker list, this year was Nick Clarke (National Manufacturing Manager) Stoddart Group talking about how Tracey Robinson's article 4P's (Purpose, People, Process, Problems) has inspired him to make changes in the way he challenges his leadership team and the shop floor.

Les Hewett (Co-Founder) Efficiency Works; with over 20 years experience in LEAN Les made a great candidate to talk about the 7 Ways to improve your OPEX initiative, great presentation and learnings shared among the group.

Peter Kennedy (HSE Senior Manager) Ernst & Young; it is amazing how our cognitive biases impact how we problem solve, this fascinating presentation by Peter had us all thinking about how we ask better questions of our people moving forward to enable us to find the real issues.

The final speaker for the day was Geoff O'Bryan (Project Manager) Metro Health, who brought his insights into how important Succession planning, will be for the future of Australian Industry.

I would like to say a very big thank you to all of the presenters on the day, and the senior leaders attending at such a busy time of the year, you all made it a great event to remember and an end to a memorable year.

Gary Silversides; Managing Director

NSW CIWG | Root Cause Reporting & Reliability

We kicked off 2019 with our first NSW common interest workgroup event at Molycop in Newcastle.

We had 19 engaged and enthusiastic participants from 9 different businesses, providing for some good, diverse insights on how organisations are tackling various issues around capturing root causes from the shop floor to improve their plant reliability.

Drew McIntyre, Maintenance Manager and Geoff Bennet, Reliability Tech provided presentations on Molycop's strategy and structures to capture team issues and drive improvement actions.

Molycop has manufactured in Newcastle for over 100 years and during the day we enjoyed a tour of their steel making facility where they manufacture steel billets and ingots in their electric arc furnace that ultimately convert into grinding balls that are used in coal, iron ore and other resource industries to grind ores to various required sizes. They also manufacture train wheels for the rail industry.

Overall it was a great start to the year so come along to our future events in NSW to acquire new knowledge and form valuable relationships with like-minded people.

John Smith; Training & Development Manager NSW

NSW CIWG | Transforming your office with Lean

In February Thales hosted our CIWG at their Orchard Hills facility in Sydney.

Attending were 18 interested people from 13 different businesses in our membership all seeking knowledge on implementing Lean into their office environments. Lots of gems of wisdom were shared on the day and a lot of note taking by participants.

We had a great presentation from Kylie Rogers, Thales Lean Manager and an insightful and inspiring tour of their offices, led by Kylie and her colleague Gabby Doyle. It was here we got to see the great work done in establishing their daily meeting boards. Most importantly hearing from the people that ran their departments and seeing how engaged they were in the process was extremely valuable to those in attendance.

We were also shown their Obeya room and Hoshin Kanri processes where strategies were deployed down through the organisation and issues escalated up where necessary.

Sharing of knowledge.

Innovation seen in action.

Relationships formed during the day.

Future ideas to move their businesses forward.

All of the above were experienced by the attendees on the day.

John Smith; Training & Development Manager NSW

QLD CIWG | Continuous Improvement Leaders Breakfast

One of the first events for 2019 saw our memberships Continuous Improvement Leaders come together and support each other’s Journey. Our wonderful hosts at Winson Groupmade this inaugural event happen with a tasty breakfast, thank you Brad Jeavons and team for support.

With an open and relaxed atmosphere our members were able to discuss the key challenges that are preventing them from elevating their businesses to the next level of excellence and collaborate on ways to resolve some of these issues. During this session our attendees tackled what they felt were two prominent issues they are all facing; Data Management and Building a Culture of Cross Function Collaboration.

It was fantastic to see such a passionate group of leaders come together and enjoy the opportunity to share, work together and network. The feedback from the event saw a unanimous vote for future events to be held so that they can continue to learn from each other. I look forward to facilitating more of these events throughout the year.

Gary Silversides; Managing Director

Ron Moore News

I was delighted to hear that Ron Moore has been honored by Reliabilityweb.com, with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to the industry.

For those of you that have had the pleasure of working with him, know this is very well deserved!

He goes above and beyond, is a wealth of valuable information and a well-respected Gentleman.

You can access the article here.

On behalf of SIRF Roundtables

Congratulations Ron! Thank you for your continued support and tireless effort on your visits to Australia; it is very much appreciated.

Lana May; Business Support Manager

SIRF Events in Pictures

SIRF held over 16 events across Queensland and New South Wales over the last quarter. The majority of these are hosted on-site by our member companies. Without the support of these companies, our members wouldn't have the opportunity to visit other sites and learn from their peers. This quarter we'd like to thank Thales, Zip Heaters, Moly-Cop, GroundProbe, Scott Automation, Kavanagh, Austral Bricks, Arnott's, Australia Post, West HQ, Winson Group, Incitec Pivot Limited.

SIRF Roundtables Blog

QLD & NSW Autumn Newsletter 2019