Philip Smart | Adelaide
It was all about continuous improvement in Adelaide on Tuesday, when 50 of the State’s defence primes and SMEs met for the SA Partners Building Defence Industry Productivity Conference, discussing the latest lean and continuous improvement techniques and learning from the experience, good and bad, of companies such as Airbus, BAE Systems and General Dynamics.
SA Partners chairman and recognised lean thinking expert Professor Peter Hines chaired the conference, with Defence SA CEO Andy Keough opening with an address on how both prime contractors and small to medium enterprises will need to adopt a continuous improvement attitude to succeed in winning and delivering Australia’s future defence projects.
“The value of effective business improvement programs has been demonstrated in Australian defence projects.”
“Peter Hines then followed with an outline of the latest advances in lean and continuous improvement techniques and then the large companies such as ASC, Airbus and BAE held presentations giving an overview of their continuous improvement programs,” Keough told ADM.
“It was all with the aim of improving the understanding about driving improved performance in defence programs and building up the capability, particularly in South Australian companies, to deliver better outcomes for the customer.
“What I was impressed with was the honest and open candour of the presenters in talking about not only successes, but also the challenges that happened along the way as well, which is all a part of the humility and the cultural aspects which come with the best of the business improvement programs.”
Keough said continuous improvement and lean programs, once considered novelties, were now part of the everyday landscape of defence contracting and offered an opportunity for SMEs to work more closely with their prime contractor customers.
“Defence companies need to continue to drive performance,” he said.
“The primes themselves are under pressure to continue to deliver performance. They drive that into their companies but they also drive that into their supply chain. We’re seeing the same thing now in the defence industry ecosystem in South Australia. So it’s very positive.”
Keough believes the value of effective business improvement programs has been demonstrated in Australian defence projects, through better performance.
“I was originally the general manager in charge of business improvement at ASC when they kicked the [continuous improvement] program off. With six other managers I went and sat in on the very first presentation by Peter Hines on lean leadership and lean principles.
“And so it’s great, eight years later, to actually see how ASC has been able to transform their business and particularly see the great improvement that ASC’s driven in submarine maintenance.
“You would have seen recently the successes as evidenced by Coles’s review of submarine maintenance. A lot of that has been driven by the continuous improvement program that has now been embedded in to the business.”