“Quicklook” Assessment of Greater Adelaide's Assets & Challenges ...

• Getting small and medium size businesses to develop better manufacturing
processes.
• Speed to market with competition – critical mass related.
• Still have not addressed the issue of the declining supply of people.
Advantages of Manufacturing in South Australia
• 5% cheaper than Victoria for wages.
• Less baggage from the unions – better arrangements with unions.
• Tie into the expertise available by associations like CSIRO, TIFA.
• Desire not to do dirty manufacturing.
What they are good at doing
• Low volume Process Engineering.
• Defense Electronics, Science & Technology.
• Water processing techniques (Prophecy – name of the company).
• World class in R&D – need to look for niche opportunities not available
elsewhere.
• Good manufacturing design base.
• SA fits the profile for New Product Introduction.
Shonowo’s Follow-up Questions
• Can the schools pick up apprenticeships? (Use technical and vocational schools
to train the talent needed).
• Can the country work together to pull the needed skills from the areas of the
country where there is an excessive supply?
• Has South Australia sold itself nationally and internationally as a good place to
develop manufacturing processes?
• Head offices have been used traditionally as a cost of switching. Is there any
other way to build in a big switching cost for companies based in SA?
• Is there a way to keep resources wide spread and still be efficient? (Can SA
develop business that could take care of support functions that are rooted in SA
and use that as a sort of switching cost and a way to build in switching cost? Like
the gentleman from GroPep said, “Build critical mass and a huge network so that
even though the clusters are small, people will not feel that they will be out in the
cold because they see other companies that can use the skills that they have.”
This is the third or fourth time that I have heard that not having industry clusters is
hurting Adelaide – Santos employee in Adelaide mentioned better feel for oil and
gas industry in Perth.)
• Can we grow the base of Manufacturing in SA beyond Automotive? What would it
take to grow the base?
Daley’s Notes and Questions with Answers
Q: Is there a way to attract R&D? R&D is critical and it leads to new processes. South
Australia does not attract a great deal of R&D because it does not have many large
corporate Headquarters where R&D is normally done.
Q: In what way is government standing in the way? Government gives funds with no
expectation of success or accomplishment. Business needs to commit to certain goals
and outcomes to qualify for further funding.
Q: What one idea would you like to see promoted that would help to more forcibly reach
your goals/objectives? That would be to have a Management attitude that is receptive to
change and not let government take the lead.
COMMERCIAL IN CONFIDENCE
39