Lean manufacturing upskilling program – Stoddart video

[Wayne Lee – Queensland Industry Skills Advisor, Manufacturing]

We've seen some huge changes to the skilling needs of industry over the last decade. Each year, the skilling requirements are growing very quickly as manufacturing processes become more and more sophisticated.

This project itself was triggered by DESBT. They were concerned about the low uptake of the workforce engaging in this program, Competitive Systems and Practices, so they asked me to investigate it. What we identified was the investment settings, it was not allowing a large proportion of the workforce to be funded to do this training. So by working together with government and industry, we were able to identify what the issue was and we were able to rectify it.

[John Major – Stoddart]

So the Lean Manufacturing and Competitive Systems and Practices has been the 2 programs that we've run. This has helped cross the business in various areas, communication within the teams themselves. We've seen an increase in efficiencies across the business and across departments. Our staff morale has had a massive improvement and retaining staff has been a big part of the training as well.

[Louie Acdol – Stoddart]

I worked with 3 other businesses that I influenced and encouraged to do lean manufacturing. Now, here at Stoddart, as my third company, pushing through continuous improvement.

At the moment we've got about 29 doing the training. It ranges from production employees, sales employees and product specialists. The difference I see for staff doing the training program is their skills in terms of communication; not only that, also their skills in terms of problem solving.

[Paul Kershaw – Stoddart]

2020, I did the Cert IV Lean Manufacturing course at Stoddart. We did it on site, which was very handy. We didn't lose a lot of downtime. Gave us a more hands on approach, because we could actually go onto the factory floor and look firsthand at what we had to achieve and look for ways to improve the business straight away, as opposed to doing it offsite then having to come back and try and apply it.

[Rohan Harradence – Stoddart]

The training has improved my job satisfaction through just being able to see the improvements the section has made in efficiencies for the month in hours taken versus allowed for jobs put to the floor.

[Lawrence Dagg – Stoddart]

After undertaking the course, I was able to show my worth to the company as doing little changes and stuff within my own section at the time. The more I showed the company, the more they wanted to promote me through the business, and I was more than happy to take on more roles as I went.

[Wayne Lee]

One of the key advantages of this program is that while it's funded by DESBT, they then provide that funding to peak bodies. That gives me a huge number of manufacturers that we can then open it up to the broader Queensland manufacturing industry. This means that we can now bring those factories back on shore because businesses can be more productive.