Episodes 1 -5 Transcripts
24th October 2011 Timken has been very active in the field of acquisitions of late, expanding its domestic American power transmission presence. After picking up Philadelphia Gear for $200M in June and QM Bearings last year, Timken has added Drives LLC to its Process Industries stable for $92M. This recent activity by the $4.1B company increases its capacity in power transmission as it diversifies from its traditional bearings and steel portfolios. --Former Reserve Bank board member Dick Warburton has been appointed as the first executive chairman of Manufacturing Australia, a new industry group which will act as a voice for the manufacturing industry on issues relating to Australia’s new highly-controversial Carbon Tax. Manufacturing Australia was formed by those companies likely to suffer most from the Carbon Tax, namely Amcor, BlueScope Steel and Boral among others and have a stated aim of deferring any Carbon Tax in Australia until the rest of the world moves first. --Nord Drivesystems Australia held its grand opening on the 6th of October at its Derrimut factory in Melbourne. Flown out for the event were NORD founder Gustav Adolf Kßchenmeister and head of International Sales Gernot Zarp. Nord has been represented in Australia for nearly twenty years, originally using recent Regal-Beloit acquisition CMG as its main distributor before coming in direct to the market at the start of 2010. --The Australian Parliament has just approved the Clean Energy Bill, 2011, which puts a price on carbon. After an aborted attempt by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at a cap and trade system
known as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a new parliament with a minority government has its own political expediencies. Well, politics aside, what does the Clean Energy Bill, 2011 mean for the Australian manufacturing sector? The scheduled start date is the 1st of July, 2012. Starting at $23 a tonne, raising 2.5% each year to 2015. There will be an Emissions trading scheme taking over from 2015, and 500 of Australia’s biggest polluters will pay. Companies that produce 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year or more will be penalised 2,000 megawatts of worst power generators to close by 2020 More information about the new tax and how it will affect industry can be found at climatechange.com.au. As you would expect with a new tax of this nature, opposition from the manufacturing industry has been pretty vocal. An ad campaign based on deferring any carbon tax implementation has been seized upon by the opposition who have stated they will repeal it if elected. In order to sweeten the deal for the manufacturing sector, exemptions and assistance packages abound, with over $9B expected to be spent to compensate losses over the short term of the next three years. In addition, this amount again is expected to be spent on investment in new technologies to help reduce CO2 output by local manufacturers. Having perused the 343 page Bill exposure draft, I can also tell you that the Clean Energy Bill is quite complex. The companies affected by it will undoubtedly have to employ resources to ensure compliance and I’m sure we will soon see Carbon Tax compliance specialists popping up, much in the same way that Six Sigma Black Belts seem to be super dooper in every manufacturing firm.
As far as the world of mechanical power transmission is concerned, overall possible new investment in technology such as carbon sequestration may be offset by a reduction in Long Run Aggregate Supply. It really is a Watch This Space. --Trade shows have been around since the year dot, and the mechanical power transmission industry is normally front and centre as exhibitors. In Australia, National Manufacturing Week, AIMEX, Bulkex, Materials Handling Expo, FedEx, oops not FedEx, but you probably get the picture of a wide variety of shows, all with varying visiting demographics and aims. So, what does a company do with so many options and (for most), only a finite marketing resource. To be honest, Australian trade shows are small affairs, when compared with the big ones in Hanover and Shanghai and some in the US as well, but attendance per capita is usually higher and exhibitor lists run long. So my question is... are they getting value for money? Let’s take National Manufacturing Week as our example. NMW is held every year, alternating between Melbourne and Sydney and incorporates the Australian Industrial Engineering Exhibition and Austech (for machine tools and equipment manufacturers). So how do the numbers play out? The smallest stand will set you back three grand for the floor space over four days, while the better spots are about four times this amount. This is only the start of the real spend... Consider everything else that has to be accounted for... The costs of a display such as banners, hardware and special stuff like giant plasma screens is pretty high. Many shows won’t let you use your own big screens, but make you rent them from them for the same price as what you can buy one with. Actually, the whole renting gig also covers tables, chairs and the electronic swipey thing for following up sales leads with.
Getting everything to the exhibition and unpacked also costs a bit. This means renting either a trailer or truck, depending on the size of your display. Servicing the stand will normally take a couple of staff members at a minimum and their costs have to be accounted for. Extra promotional activities, catalogues, entertainment et cetera all adds up pretty quickly and before too long you’re out of pocket at least ten grand, probably closer to twenty if you’re doing it well. So, what are the benefits for this sort of outlay? Well, straight up, a whole heap of existing and potential customers are in the one place and coming to you. The problem is, they are seeing all of your competition at the same time as well. Still, 20,000 odd visitors is definitely a big number and even though only a small percentage will be interested in your product offering, the sheer scale alone will keep the reps on the stand busy. I’ve been to a few trade shows over the years both as an exhibitor and a visitor. One thing that nobody talks about is that there is a certain type of person that goes to them. After a trade show, I’d go around seeing customers in their place of business and ask how they enjoyed it. Less than half would even know it was on, and the half that did know could probably be halved again for actual attendance. I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s a certain type of person that goes in. There are always going to be leads from trade shows, and following them up is where the real benefits are. You can’t expect an immediate sales spike as a result of exhibiting at a trade show, but immediate sales isn’t normally the desired outcome. Companies are mainly trying to look good – put simply. It’s the fourth P of the marketing mix – Promotion. Actually, I’ll take that one step further and call it Promotion through Positioning.
There is no doubt that in Australia, if there is a trade show, SEW-Eurodrive will have the biggest stand of all gearing companies, in the best spot, with the shiniest display. Bonfiglioli, Nord, Sumitomo, and Radicon all normally have a presence, while Queensland firm TEA is a staple for PT consumables. The benefits obviously outweigh the costs for these firms, otherwise they wouldn’t keep rocking up year after year. --The high value of the Australian dollar continues to wreak havoc with the manufacturing sector, as BlueScope Steel, Heinz and SPC – who are both canned food manufacturers – and Ford have shed staff and decided to limit output in the short term. BlueScope has decided to lose 1000 workers across the nation as demand for Australian steel plummets, flying in the face of growing OECD requirements which are being nicely handled by China. Last year, BlueScope recorded a $1B loss and with high fixed costs in the steel manufacturing industry was left with no real option but to mothball its Port Kembla furnace and Hastings Hot Strip Mill. Heinz is trimming its workforce by 20% in a radical shakeup that closes one Victorian plant, reduces production at its Queensland cannery and will see 342 jobs go overall. Most of the production will shift to sister plants in New Zealand, who doesn’t have an astronomical currency to contend with. SPC in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley is also right-sizing to suit current demand, by retrenching 150 across three plants. Imported fruit is the culprit here, along with flagging domestic consumption. SPC parent company Coca-Cola Amatil is looking to lighten the load on individuals retrenched by offering them positions within the company where possible, however the local area will see those positions lost for the foreseeable future.
Ford Australia is also lightening its wage bill to the tune of 240 employees at its Broadmeadows and Geelong plants, as demand for their product also wanes. There is little doubt that the current mining boom in Australia is causing some headaches for Australian manufacturers, especially those who rely on imports for whole or part of their income. Sure enough, the price of imported materials has come down accordingly but it isn’t really enough to offset the pressure that a high currency puts on local product. Tariffs are basically a thing of the past for many Australian industries and paper, steel, textiles and cars are all vulnerable whilst the Australian Dollar sits above parity with the Greenback.
7th November 2011 The New South Wales government has established a Taskforce to develop an action plan for the next ten years to help combat its shrinking manufacturing base. The Manufacturing Industry Action Plan will take 12 months to get ready and will focus on specific sectors that the New South Wales government thinks it can gain an advantage in, namely food, metals, machinery, biomedical, defence and renewables. Not content with having a state lead the way, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will chair a taskforce of her own. Tasked with getting to the bottom of the employment woes in manufacturing on a national basis, this task force will feature 23 individuals, representing manufacturers, unions and the government. Well, Australian states have been at each other’s throats for decades in trying to secure major manufacturing contracts. Whenever defence contracts come up, governments bend over backwards with assistance packages to help get jobs in their jurisdictions. 10 years ago Victoria wouldn’t stump up with some cash to keep Arnotts biscuits in Melbourne so Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide facilities were expanded and Melbourne was closed. This scenario plays out all the time, so it will be interesting to see how both the New South Wales Action Plan and the federal version will look at generating new business rather than shifting existing business between states. --BHP Billiton has received approval from the Australian Federal Government to expand its Olympic Dam mining operations. Copper, uranium, gold and silver are extracted from Olympic Dam in South Australia, and the expansion will make it the world’s largest open cut mine.
It is projected that the expansion will deliver $8B of benefit to the South Australian economy, whilst mining engineering and infrastructure spending also stands to benefit the mechanical power transmission world. Regardless of the philosophical objections to a mine that looks set to exploit around one quarter of the world’s known uranium reserves, there is little doubting the scale of the benefit from the expansion. The uranium bubble of 2007 is long over, where prices peaked at $300 per kilogram. The current price of around $100 per kilogram will still reap major rewards, although the bulk of the revenue will come from copper and gold. Australian smallgoods manufacturer Primo continues its capital investment program in Queensland, spending $131M in consolidating its existing operations and expanding Wacol’s production facilities. This flies in the face of some recent reversals in the food sector and is welcome news for Queensland. --United Dairy Power has bought the Murray Bridge and Jervois cheese-manufacturing assets of Lion and is looking to add milk production to the South Australian production facilities for the local market. --Japanese-owned Lion is consolidating its dairy production with a renewed focus on Tasmania, in light of posting financial reverses resulting from the loss-leading milk war being fought by supermarket oligarchs Coles and Woolworths. The news of the purchase by Victorian-based UDP is a relief for the more than 100 staff at the two plants, who only a few months ago had an uncertain future. ---
Electrical measurement company Fluke is conducting a series of workshops in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth starting on November 10. The main focus of the workshops will be looking to understand the diagnostic fault process of three phase electric motors. The practical demonstration and troubleshooting sessions are aimed at maintenance staff and will set each attendee back $199.00. Find the link in the show notes to episode two. --Well, from once being the tome of advertising to “I think we have a Yellow Pages but I couldn’t tell you where it is”, Sensis-owned Yellow Pages has been an Australian staple for over 80 years. As business directories go, the Yellow Pages is pretty much synonymous. As you can guess, people still let their fingers do the walking to hunt down what they are looking for, but are moving away from the book to the computer – as well as tablets and mobile phones. The real question now becomes, does Yellow Pages still offer value for Business to Business customers? The power transmission, electric motor and bearings categories have long been numerous pages each in past editions of the Yellow Pages, but each of these now has under one page of listings. The size of the individual advertisements has also decreased. This must surely dent the revenue stream of what once was a very sizeable cash cow. Sensis hasn’t had its head in the sand during this digital evolutionary period. It has increased its value to advertisers by belatedly linking up with Google and going mainstream with their own website and search engine. The Google linkup is with adwords and other Google products such as Google Earth and Streetview. Paid advertisers get premium consideration on Google searches as well, above standard Search Engine Optimisation techniques.
So, what is the definition of value in a B2B context? A medium sized, three-colour advertisement in the Yellow Pages will set you back just over $10,000 per annum for a major market like Sydney or Melbourne. For your money you also get a good presence online. There’s no real way of measuring the effectiveness of the Yellow Pages in hardcopy form, short of asking every new customer that calls how he or she found you. As with all things that require an outlay, the money has to be made on the other side to cover it, so in effect we’re looking at 30 to 40 grand in sales to cover a 10 grand spend. The best known off-line alternatives are trade magazines, trade shows and sponsorships, as well as handling your own Search Engine Optimisation on-line. Each of these cost varying amounts, but none of them are good enough to carry the full weight of a B2B marketing effort on its own. In the power transmission world, any marketing effort is worthless unless it is backed up with a skilled and motivated outside sales and supply team. The technical nature of the problems and products in power transmission require more than what a purchasing officer or engineer can simply type into a search engine. Of course, relationships are the key to understanding the exact details of what is required, but this is a conversation for another day. In answering the question I posed about the Yellow Pages being good value in a B2B environment, I think that the days of the $40,000 annual spend are long gone, but some presence is still a must. It still presents a way to come up pretty high on Google – always on the first page for your product group – which is probably better value than adwords alone. The Yellow Pages is always going to be around to find mechanics, floor sanders, panel shops and adult services. It has not been a force for B2B customers for a few years and will need to keep adapting its product as the digital environment evolves. It’s time for a quick refresher for electric enclosure ingress protection – known in many countries as IP ratings.
IP ratings are used to identify how protected electric motors are to the elements, both solids and liquids, and are represented by two numbers. For example, IP54, which has a protection to level 5 solids and level 4 liquids. The solids protection levels are from 0 to 6. 0 is no protection to solids, 1 is to over 50mm, 2 is to over 12.5mm, level 3 is to over 2.5mm, 4 is to over 1mm, 5 is called dust protection and level 6 is called dust tight. This is not to be confused with DIP or dust ignition proof, which is used in grain handling. The liquids protection levels are from 0 to 8. 0 means don’t get it wet, 1 is protection against vertical dripping water, 2 is for vertical with a 15 degree tilt, 3 is against spraying water, 4 is against splashing water, 5 is for water jets, 6 is protection against super water jets, 7 and 8 are for immersion in under 1m and over 1m of water. The US has its own system of ratings which was originally prepared by NEMA or the National Electrical Manufacturers Association. The NEMA ratings are actually more complex than the IEC’s IP ratings and cover additional things such as corrosion protection, giving ratings that are linked to specific environmental applications. Most electric motors in Australia these days are TEFC or totally enclosed fan cooled and have an IP rating of IP54 as standard. WEG has standardised its W22 electric motor range as IP66 and many manufacturers are heading in this direction with their standard offerings. --I thought I’d do a bit of further research on some of the ways businesses can reduce carbon emissions – especially in a manufacturing sense. I was happy to see that Melbourne was hosting Carbon Expo 2011 in early November and was about to register to attend, before finding out that entry to the trade expo portion of the event on its own would set me back $300.00. If I wanted to see a conference during the day, that would be $750.00.
I suppose the Carbon Market Institute and the Investor Group on Climate Change would like to keep the riff-raff out of their Expo and make sure only genuine visitors come through the doors. I wonder if they’ll have bouncers as well. I have an interest in finding out ways companies are looking to innovate, especially when it comes to global warming, but I think I’ll be doing my carbon emissions reduction research online.
21st November 2011 Brazilian electric motor giant WEG is in the process of acquiring Austrian gearbox manufacturer Watt Drive Antriebstechnik GmbH, for an as yet undisclosed sum. Watt Drive turns over €30M per year and the purchase represents the first in a series of movements by WEG into the gearing and power transmission business. Watt Drive is represented in Australia by Southern Engineering Services and it will be interesting to see how this purchase will affect existing distribution relationships and agreements. $3.6B WEG has also entered into a joint venture with Brazilian gearing manufacturer Cestari Industrial, with a view to develop and market an entirely new range of complete geared motors. It would appear that WEG’s view to continued growth lies outside its traditional spheres of electricity generation, transmission and control. The linkup with Cestari will probably see WEG coming out with compact modular gear units, much in the same mould as Bonfiglioli’s compact range, SEW and Nord. Australian electric efficiency standards - known as MEPS - make it mandatory for all motors to meet IE3 premium efficiency in 2013, unless the motor is attached to a gearbox and removal would render it inoperable. The WEG / Cestari joint venture could take advantage of this loophole. The Watt Drive acquisition and Cestari joint venture deal are WEG’s first foray into the gearing world and signify a medium-level investment without the need for infrastructure spending. WEG itself might be immune from a retaliatory response from any of the gearing manufacturers that these recent movements challenge, as an entry into the electric motor manufacturing world is far less lucrative. ---
The ink is still drying on a deal which sees Altra Industrial Motion add Bauer Gear Motor to its list of brands. German-based Bauer has been in operation since 1927 and has an impressive list of OEM customers and applications. Bauer joins other Altra gearing brands such as Boston Gear and Nuttall Gear, as well as a comprehensive range of power transmission equipment including Warner and Wichita. Altra Industrial Motion is based in Braintree, Massachusetts, and has a turnover of more the $600M per annum with a staff of 3000. --SEW is in the process of expanding its Melbourne assembly workshop, buying the site next door to their current Tullamarine facility as it gears up for an expected increase in demand from the mining sector. The $10M capital investment by the geared motor goliath will be gobbled up quickly, with the purchase of a 50 tonne crane and the implementation of a new painting facility. --Gear Expo 2011 was held in early November in Cincinnati, Ohio. 4600 attendees filtered past 180 gearing-related exhibitors, with visitors hailing from 28 countries. Reviews of the event have been mostly positive, and the 2013 Gear Expo is planned to be held in Indianapolis in September 2013. After both New South Wales and Australian governments announced new innovation taskforces to help source manufacturing opportunities, the South Australian government has formed a whole department. The departments of Primary Industry and Trade have been merged to form the Department of Manufacturing, Innovation, Trade, Resources and Energy and putting the word Manufacturing’ first is an indication of the department’s primary function. ---
I received a tweet after episode two of the Australian PT Podcast from the Australian Carbon Expo, advising me that entry to the trade show was $300.00 for three days, but only $100.00 for a single day entry. Sorry about that, I said that it was $300.00 to get in. It looks like the Melbourne event was a success, coming fresh off the heels of Australia’s new Carbon Tax legislation passing through parliament and being attended by some major players, both in politics and industry. --It has been called many things; from reverse engineering to outright knock off. The geared motor industry is in the midst of a rush of cheap imported product, where the designs are passed off as those of major brands. A significant portion of the knock offs are coming to western shores on capital machinery imported from China, utilising geared motors sourced domestically. Issues are found when a premature equipment failure hits the end user and when replacement time comes, sizing and fitment problems come to the fore. It is usually only then that the copy is identified. Pass offs are an issue for many manufacturers, with the main victim of choice being SEW because they have the most easily-recognisable product range. SEWs R series of in-line helical gearboxes comes in for the biggest hiding. Motovario’s range of wormboxes also seems to be a copier’s favourite, as are Var-Spe, Flender and Sumitomo. Even though a lot of the SEW product in the world is actually manufactured in China, the SEW hierarchy is quick to point out that this is to an exacting standard that doesn’t do anything to lessen their brand. Clean room design is a useful defence against charges of copyright infringement, but these offending articles aren’t even concerned about defending themselves. Clean room design is a reference to enough components of a reverse engineered article being different enough from the item it is copied from to be considered a new design.
Last year we had one of these copies apart in our workshop after it had failed after less than three months in action. In addition to none of the gears being hardened or ground, a spacer for the output gear was hand cut by a hacksaw from a piece of water pipe. Whoever assembled it actually had two goes at cutting this bit of pipe as it had an extra slice in it, not square of course. The real victim of counterfeit gearboxes entering the marketplace is unquestionably the end user, who may or may not be suspecting to get a cheap copy of a name brand. I’m positive that anyone who knowingly buys a knock-off with a view to saving money on an application will not be replacing it with another knock-off when replacement time comes, normally within 24 months. Does this unfettered counterfeit behaviour signify the start of something bigger between Chinese manufacturers and the companies whose products are being copied? Many gearing companies have at one stage or another had dalliances with outsourcing components to other countries; it would seem that many are only now starting to see some hidden costs that don’t come up on the profit and loss statement. Just as an aside, probably the most famous reverse engineered product in recent history was the Soviet Tupolev TU-4 strategic bomber, which was ripped straight from some commandeered American Boeing B29s immediately after the Second World War. If nothing else, at least the Soviets had the good sense to change everything from imperial to metric! --Nord have released a range of bevel-helical geared motors aimed at the washdown market – primarily food manufacturing. The range features a die-cast aluminium housing that has open sections to aid cleaning, and a torque output range of 90 to 660Nm across five sizes. In my opinion, the openings around the bevel output make the gearboxes look spinely and a little out of place. I suppose the goal is to make them look very different to the SEW profile, which is nearly ubiquitous in food manufacturing. Time will tell how popular they become.
--The big news as we put the last episode of the Australian Power Transmission Podcast to bed was that car manufacturer Holden was looking to ship the design of the iconic Commodore offshore and close the local design facility, a claim that was vehemently denied by the Holden top brass. Australia has three car manufacturers; Holden, Ford and Toyota, all subsidiaries of overseas parent companies and who have all received government funding to keep their doors open at one time or another. Toyota used its assistance package to begin local production of the Hybrid Camry, while Ford and Holden have both used the money to get their latest product offerings to market. Even so, retrenchments abound. The federal government originally planned to fund automotive innovation until 2020 but cut it short when the money was needed to rebuild Queensland after natural disasters in 2010. Domestic car production has basically halved in the last six years, to now be under 200,000 cars per year. This slump has had a major impact in the outlook of not only the auto manufacturers themselves, but also the significant Australian automotive component industry. It is this component industry that stands to lose the most if the number of vehicles produced falls below the viable critical mass. Already, the Commodore sports a number of imported components and this is only going to keep increasing with each new model, the same goes with new Fords and Toyotas. It goes against all sound economic theory to have either any tariff or any subsidy for industries in which an economy is not globally competitive. The problem is, the car industry in Australia does not stand alone; it supports the component industry which serves them but also does a fair bit of the rest of manufacturing in Australia. Car manufacturing processes utilise a lot of power transmission equipment, both in consumables and new projects. If one of the three manufacturers were to pull up stumps and become a sole-
importer a la Mitsubishi and Nissan, there will be a significant reduction in PT requirements right across the manufacturing base. There is no denying that costs in Australia are high, across the board. Car manufacturers have implemented automation processes where possible to reduce the labour content of each product in an attempt to limit variable costs, but there is only so much that can be done. Design, engineering, production: three very important, high level skill sets that we are told repeatedly are important to Australia’s manufacturing future.
5th December, 2011 The Power Transmission Distributors Association (PTDA) elected its 2012 Board of Directors and Manufacturer Council in Washington, DC in October at their Industry Summit. Mitch Bouchard of General Bearing Service succeeds David Mayer of Kaman Industrial Technologies. The balance of the board comprises Christopher Bursack from Industrial Supply Co, Ken Miko from BDI and Keith Nowak of NPT Drives. The Directorship is made up of Harold Dunaway of Motion Industries, LeRoy Burcroff of Bearing Service, Rick White of Flexco, Carlton Harvey of Jamaica Bearings, Ajay Bajaj of Rotator Products Limited and Thomas Clawser of Brown Transmission and Bearing Co. George Rizza – who is the President of Rossi Gearmotor Division, Habasit America – takes over from Pamela Kan of Bishop-Wisecarver as PTDA Manufacturer Council chair. The male-domination of the industry in general is directly reflected by the make-up the both the board of the PTDA and the Manufacturer Council. Representing 178 power transmission distributors across 11 countries, the Power Transmission Distributors Association has a stated mission of advancing distribution and strengthening members to be successful, profitable and competitive in a changing market environment.’ --Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group – Heather Ridout – addressed the National Press Club in Canberra on November 30th. Titled ‘Taking Charge of Our Future’, Ms. Ridout acknowledged the high-cost and multi-speed economy as being burdensome to local manufacturing, before offering some ideas for possible restructuring in the sector. After teeing off on some of the federal government’s recent workplace relations decisions which she feels to be too heavily slanted to
favour unions, the biggest takeaway point was probably the support Ms. Ridout gave to the government’s mining tax. --The Canadian Manufacturing Technology Show 2011 was held in Toronto at the end of October, proving to be a moderate success if the Twitter stream is anything to go by. Manufacturing accounts for 13% of Canada’s GDP (Australian manufacturing represents 10% of GDP) and the two economies are very similar, in that there is a large reliance on natural resources. For the show itself, SEW-Eurodrive dominated power transmission proceedings and over six and a half thousand people filtered through the Direct Energy Centre over four days. --Brazil continues to offer a very attractive home for power transmission capital investment, with Japan’s Sumitomo Heavy Industries investing $73M in a new gear reducer manufacturing plant. Opened late November, the plant joins similar SHI facilities situated in developing economies – a stated growth strategy of the organisation. Brazil has been economically unstoppable for the past few years and I think we are going to see even more announcements like this one from Sumitomo. --The Victorian Minister for the Aviation Industry was front and centre for the recent announcement that Melbourne would provide Boeing GoldCare maintenance services to the Asia-Pacific region. Boeing chose John Holland Aviation Services to look after its B737NG fleet as well as the 787 Dreamliner.
John Holland is the new name of the former Ansett Engineering and although aviation engineering is a specialist field, power transmission equipment features heavily throughout the maintenance process. --The Prime Minister’s Manufacturing Taskforce held its first meeting in late November. Tasked with securing a working future for over one million Australian manufacturing workers, the Taskforce concluded that there are many serious issues facing manufacturers and that something should be done to help them. In all seriousness, the Taskforce concluded that existing state and federal policies need to be better co-ordinated and leveraged, science and technology were going to be the leading forces and management of the entire process was critical. --As reported in episode two of the Australian Power Transmission Podcast, BHP-Billiton was given the green light to expand its Olympic Dam mining operations. Controversially, Olympic Dam sits atop significant reserves of uranium. It comes as little surprise that only weeks after the go ahead was given to exploit Olympic Dam, the leader of the ruling Australian Labour Party and current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has announced her intention to overturn the ALP’s 30-year ban on selling uranium to India. --Said to account for 30% of electricity consumption in Australia, electric motors are the mainstay of the industrial sector, performing every task from mixing and conveying to pumping and crushing. For the most part, these motors have done their job with an efficiency in the 80-90% range, but
governments the world over are seeing what benefits are on offer by increasing this efficiency percentage into the mid 90s. Minimum Energy Performance Standards were introduced at the turn of the century by the Australian and New Zealand governments for a wide range of electrical equipment. For electric motors, a rating of MEPS 1 came into effect in October 2001, whilst the higher efficiency MEPS 2 superseded MEPS 1 in 2006. All three phase electric motors that are either made in or imported into Australia must comply with the minimum efficiencies as set out by the MEPS ratings. When I say all motors, the sizes covered range from 0.73kW to 185kW in 2, 4, 6 and 8 pole configuration, which for all intents and purposes may as well be all motors. There are some exceptions to the MEPS rule. MEPS doesn’t apply to submersible motors, integral motor-gear systems – like those available from Bonfiglioli, SEW and Nord – variable and multi-speed motors or motors rated less than continuous duty. Motors that have been rewound are also not required to comply with MEPS. Motor manufacturers have not shied away from the responsibilities of meeting efficiency standards around the world. The standard measure for increasing efficiency has been to use larger, lowerresistance winding wire and higher quality steel for laminations. When coupled with total motor redesigns, the efficiency standards have been able to be met on a consistent basis. One of the benefits of the new, high-efficiency motor range is that they also have improved performance at part load, making them extremely suitable for variable speed drive service. Many major manufacturers are taking advantage of this fact by matching motors and drives in their product offerings.
There have been many sets of figures bandied around by different groups – all with an agenda and all relating to the savings from the introduction of MEPS. Regardless of the source, common wisdom points to an overall cost / benefit ratio of 1.8. California led the way with minimum efficiency standards, empowering the Californian Energy Commission to regulate electric equipment over 30 years ago. Since this time, the US has led the world in electrical energy efficiency and looks to continue in the same vain for a long time. This is in stark contrast to the common assessment of American cars, colloquially labelled Gas Guzzlers and Yank Tanks. Further developments in efficiency standards for electric motors are always on the agenda and will continue to keep manufacturers on their toes. --For all of the tribologists out there, here’s a quick overview of lubrication in the geared motor industry. The lubrication industry is probably worthy of its own fortnightly podcast. A lot is spent on research and development and competition is fierce among the major players in the industry. Lubrication in enclosed gear drives is a very explicit niche of lubrication, where four specific parameters must be met, namely; gear wear protection, water separability, corrosion protection and foaming resistance. Geared motor manufacturers are continually pushing the envelope with their designs, trying to get the highest input power and largest output shaft into the most compact unit possible. All of which places greater demands on the lubrication used.
Gear wear protection is the primary function of lubricants in gearboxes, but the same oil must also lubricate the bearings and rolling elements. This presents something of a compromise to some of the properties of the lubricant and which additives can be added. Extreme Pressure (or EP) additives are introduced when gearbox loads may overcome the viscosity of standard oil and cause higher than normal gear and bearing wear. These additives create a film on the metal surfaces to prevent direct contact and can be used in conjunction with solids such as molybdenum disulphide to create a physical metal-to-metal contact barrier. Water separability or demulsibility is a major requirement of gearbox lubricant, where liquids such as coolant and condensation come into contact with the gearbox oil and must be easily removable. Demilsifiers are added to ensure that water cannot emulsify with the gearbox oil, using some pretty impressive chemistry in the process. Corrosion protection is important in gearbox lubricant, due to the fact that many gear units utilise yellow metals such as copper and brass as well as cast iron. This creates something of a problem, as many features of rust protection for cast iron are chemically-aggressive to the softer yellow metals. The ability to resist foaming is also extremely important in gear oils. Foaming results from the natural movement of gears and is especially prevalent in high speed applications. Polymers are added to change to surface tension of the lubricant, killing bubbles as they form. Different loads and temperature effects require differing types of oil. For low load applications in standard temperatures, a straight mineral oil is adequate. When the load increases, a mineral oil with EP additives might be required.
As the conditions become more demanding, synthetic
lubricants come into their own. Once again, there are different types of synthetic lubricants for differing applications. Polyglycol synthetic lubricants with EP additives such as Shell Tivella are a general synthetic lubricant for
wormboxes. Most off the shelf wormboxes like the Bonfiglioli W series run this type of lubricant and are basically sealed for life in applications where running conditions are less than 40 degrees Celsius above ambient. Polyalphaolefin synthetic lubricants with EP additives like the very popular Shell Omala will give approximately four times the working life of mineral oil in the same application. These are normally specified in bevel-helical and in-line helical gearboxes. Other things to be considered when specifying gearbox oils are whether there will be food contact or bio-degradable qualities required. All of these properties are specified by the major manufacturers to aid comparison. I won’t go into too much more detail about oils and lubrication because it is a massive subject and I want to do it justice by going further in a future episode. ---
19th December, 2011 The Italian Bonfiglioli Group is looking to end 2011 with strength, recording net revenues of 680 million Euros across all strategic business units. There has been a major shift in sales distribution, with sales from European markets dropping from 458 to 400 million Euros, while emerging markets helped Bonfiglioli post a 13% sales jump from 2010. Bonfiglioli has identified consistent Research and Development – even during the European financial downturn – as being a major factor in the turnaround. Strong demand in the wind energy sector has been beneficial to overall sales, as well as heavy machinery and agricultural equipment – two traditional stalwarts of Bonfiglioli revenue. --Dwarfing Bonfiglioli’s sales is the result by ZF Friedrichschafen AG, the German gearing engineering and manufacturing firm that specialises in the automotive sector. ZF Group recently acquired Hansen Transmissions of Belgium on its way to an overall result of 15.5 billion Euros for 2011. ZF joins its major competition in identifying wind turbines, electric hybrid technology and an increase in production capacity in developing nations as strategic growth initiatives. ZF should also be commended for reaping the rewards of consistent investment in R&D. --The Australian government has had a cabinet reshuffle, with a few portfolios playing switcheroo. Former Minister for Innovation Senator Kim Carr has been removed from this central role, to be put in charge of the new Ministry for Manufacturing. Innovation now becomes part of a super ministry, officially titled the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education – somehow implying all of these are linked. The large ministry will be handled jointly by Greg Combet
MP and Senator Chris Evans, while Mark Dreyfus MP will be appointed Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation, supporting Minister Combet. Various Australian state governments have ministers for manufacturing, which are normally lumped in with innovation and trade. As a separate ministry, I’m not sure how Senator Carr is going to make manufacturing his own. I’m certain that the Minister will have a significant role in the Prime Minister’s newly-created taskforce on keeping the manufacturing sector employed, as well as a bit of ribbon cutting, but a Minister of Manufacturing and a Minister of Industry will surely have too much crossover to work effectively. Already, Senator Carr has organised meetings in the US to see the bosses at GM and Ford to tee up funding for the local subsidiaries. Both manufacturers are in a difficult position in Australia and will probably require Senator Carr to turn up with an open wallet when he visits next month, and not vice versa. --Only a short time has elapsed since the announcement that Altra Industrial Motion had purchased Bauer Gear Motor, but that hasn’t stopped the powers that be in Braintree from searching out possible synergies with existing brands and technologies. Altra announced the 2000 series of helical bevel gearboxes and integral gear motors, utilising experience and knowledge from both Bauer and Boston Gear. The 2000 series looks to be pitched at the food manufacturing industry, with many of its features assisting washdown and corrosion resistance. Utilising both IEC and NEMA motor frames is a smart move and should allow universal acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic. It isn’t clear if Australia will be a recipient. I am a little disconcerted that one of the key promotional points that Altra has chosen to run with is the fact that the 2000 series is a direct ‘drop-in’ replacement for the SEW-Eurodrive KA series of
gearboxes. Some of Altra’s promotional material states that in designing the 2000 series, product specialists asked customers what they wanted in a geared motor design. The answer was obviously they wanted the KA series by SEW! --South Australian Harley-Davidson subsidiary New Castalloy has been given an 18 month death sentence by its Milwaukee parent, as the motorcycle giant closes the plant in favour of having its wheels made in the US and Japan. 212 staff will go from the North Plympton manufacturing facility and although profitable, the usual issue of exchange rates has been put forward as a contributing factor for the close, as well as the ending of a financial agreement between Harley-Davidson and the South Australian government. Harley-Davidson had pretty much rescued Castalloy in 2006 when it was on the verge of going broke and has had the bulk of its wheels produced there since. --The Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group – Heather Ridout – is soon to be the former Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group as she resigns her post in favour of a position on the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia. The Australian Industry Group represents all areas of Australian business, with a focus on manufacturing and industry. The role that Ms. Ridout has played in Canberra cannot be underestimated as the chief lobbyist for the manufacturing sector and it will be interesting to see if her successor will come from within the ranks of the 300 staff currently employed at AI Group or if someone from outside will be headhunted. ---
As announced in the inaugural Australian Power Transmission Podcast, BlueScope Steel had decided to reduce production in line with flagging demand at both Port Kembla and Hastings, laying off 1000 workers in the process. The same episode also had details of Australia’s new carbon tax, and how it was going to affect business. Well, combine the two and you get the next news item. BlueScope has applied to the federal government for $100M of industry assistance, under the Steel Transformation Plan, which is aimed at helping to offset the carbon bills as they roll in but is in effect a way to keep the doors open at a major employment source in disparate areas of the country. --The Thompson Coupling is the brainchild of Glenn Thompson, an Australian from rural New South Wales who has rethought the constant velocity joint and invented a shorter and more efficient way of joining high-misalignment shafts together. To be more correct with Thompson’s invention, there are two products that his company markets from its Orange, New South Wales premises; namely the Thompson Constant Velocity Joint and the Alignment Eliminator pump coupling range. The Thompson Constant Velocity Joint would appear to be the backbone of the design’s future, being used in high-torque applications for rail infrastructure and miscellaneous industrial functions, whilst the Alignment Eliminator is an off-the-shelf offering for high-misalignment pump applications up to 73kW. The Alignment Eliminator is more in keeping with the purview of the Australian PT Podcast so I will focus my attention on it. The Alignment Eliminator will handle up to six degrees of misalignment in axial, offset and angular configuration and there are four sizes in the range, handling from up to 10kW through to up to 75kW. Like many gear couplings, the Alignment Eliminator must not be perfectly aligned and requires some misalignment to function correctly.
The fact that it can cope with higher
misalignment means that it can be fitted and set up in a much shorter time than couplings requiring proper aligning with lasers.
The smart design of the Alignment Eliminator has patents on the go all across the world, and Thompson is currently looking at licence agreements for manufacture and distribution, to supplement what is produced locally. I know that this segment sounds like an advertisement for the Thompson Coupling but I’m really impressed with what it can do. I’m not the only one, as Boeing has signed a long-term development contract as they look for ongoing applications. In Australia, the distributor of the Alignment Eliminator is Southern Engineering Services out of Wollongong, New South Wales. --As I say at the top and bottom of every show, you can contact the Australian Power Transmission Podcast on twitter as well as through comments on the website or via email. It got me to thinking how popular twitter is with marketers, so I thought I’d do a bit of research into its reach for the Business to Business audience. Twitter (and social media in general) is something of an unknown quantity in the B2B world, whilst being almost invisible in the field of mechanical power transmission. There are a few bearing retailers and electric motor rewinders who have a twitter profile and are fairly active, but none of the world’s gearing manufacturers have bothered with the medium. Taking the next step in the social media landscape, Facebook has business pages that offer a way for consumers to deal directly with businesses and vice versa. In mechanical power transmission, it’s almost a ghost town. SEW, WEG, Baldor, Sumitomo and Altra have pages, but the content is simply a direct rip from their corresponding Wikipedia page. There are no site administrators for any of these pages, by the looks of it, and there isn’t really a way to contact them. From my investigation, no one else has put anything on their Facebook page, making searching for them nigh on impossible and leaving a gaping hole of a marketing opportunity. I know I’m sort of preaching to the converted because you are listening to this podcast and are probably aware of
everything to do with twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and a myriad of other social media platforms and even how they can be used for B2B dealings. It’s just funny that some of the big multinationals will spend megabucks on advertising campaigns, tradeshows, classy websites and more, yet social media – and its’ relatively little cost, sails through to the keeper. Of all manufacturers using social media, Bishop-Wisecarver does one of the better jobs of engaging with its community. The Pittsburg, California manufacturer of linear motion guide wheels is all over twitter with close to 6000 tweets, has an active YouTube channel and of course actually has a Facebook page. I wouldn’t call linear motion guide wheels the sexiest technology to be in, yet these guys do a fantastic job that I’m sure creates more in sales than it costs per annum. Business to Business customers aren’t looking at retail type social media marketing efforts, but I think that the scope exists for manufacturers to at least get involved.