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Bankwest launches data science internship and graduate programs

WA financial institution Bankwest has taken new steps to actively foster talent and grow the data science community in WA, with the establishment of an intern program and a graduate development program, both in data science. The six-week internship program launched in January and the first four graduates on to the new data science graduate development program start this month (Feb 18). Bankwest Executive General Manager of Customer Solutions and Insights Pieter Vorster said the programs are part of Bankwest’s focus on leveraging data science and analytics to help deliver the digital products and services expected by customers. “As part of a growing focus on being an insight led business, we’re turning our attention to helping develop home-grown talent and increase the size of the data science community here in WA.” The internship The first two interns to join the program were Nazanin Sabooniha and Tim Howat, both of whom are studying Masters degrees in Perth. Both are spending six weeks working with Bankwest’s Data Science team within CS&I and have hit the ground running. Nazanin said: “I came to Bankwest hoping to use the knowledge and skills I’ve learned at university to put something into practice in the real-world environment. And just a couple of weeks in I’m already doing this. It’s great to be able to apply the theory to something real and see it work. Tim added: “I wanted to make the connection between what we’ve learned at university and how that’s applied in a real work scenario. Also, for Bankwest and this industry, I wanted to experience applying these skills to create value, enabling possibilities for customers.” The graduate development program Pieter said: “For too long highly skilled and capable STEM grads have picked up their degrees from university, packed their bags and jumped on a […]

CBA’s Flash Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index for February

Key insights: The Australian private sector has dipped into contraction territory for the first time in the CBA PMI survey’s history, indicating the Australian economy has lost momentum. Behind the reduction in output was a dip in services business activity amid reports of a soft market demand and drought conditions. The move lower in PMI readings is part of a global trend and highlights the increasing concerns central bankers hold about the global economic outlook. Key quotes from CBA Chief Economist Michael Blythe: “The dip in the PMI below the 50 line that separates expansion from contraction is a significant event. It is the first negative reading in the life of the Australian PMI survey.” “It indicates a loss of momentum in the Australian economy at the start of 2019. It also underlines the shift in forward guidance by the RBA to a more neutral setting.” “The divergence between contracting service sector activity and expanding manufacturing activity should be noted. It shows the slowdown is not broadly based and the more forward looking components like jobs and business sentiment point to a recovery later in 2019.”

No cabling misconfiguration with connect chain configurator

The new Ölflex Connect Chain configurator from LAPP Australia will introduce visitors to AUSPACK 19 in March to a simple way to digitally engineer a power chain online with just a few clicks of the mouse. The new tool from one the world’s leading providers of branded cable and connector systems, LAPP, ensures configuring power chains for automation, electrical and process solutions is no longer a complicated task, even for less experienced users. The Ölflex Connect Chain configurator automatically switches off all error sources and always finds the best solution, says LAPP Australia General Manager Simon Pullinger. The online configurator, available nationally, acts as a step-by-step guide through the choice of cable chain, cables and relevant accessories. Ölflex technology will feature in the debut of the new LAPP Australia operation at AUSPACK 2019 In Melbourne from March 26-29 (Stand G130). This first appearance of the fully-fledged LAPP subsidiary in Australia – opened in February 2018 – will provide key markets with a unique overview and personal introduction to Lapp’s globally respected product families, used in Australia for more than 30 years and produced at 18 manufacturing locations on four continents. Ölflex Connect Chain configurator Ölflex Connect Chain configurator ensures components are compatible every step of the way, especially when it comes to the cables’ minimum bend radius. The cable chain must not have a smaller bend radius than the cable. If this is the case, the configurator will display a warning message and suggest other types of cable chain. Other criteria include the travel length, acceleration, temperature behaviour and shielding. The configurator automatically excludes cables that are not suitable for the application. “When the configuration is complete, users receive a personalised quotation and are then able to choose whether you want to purchase the power chain fully assembled by LAPP or […]

Vital Signs: why more expensive milk won’t help farmers much

The supermarket giant Woolworths this week broke ranks and announced it was going to stop selling A$1 per litre milk. It will now charge A$1.10, or A$2.20 for two litres. Chief executive Brad Banducci made it clear that there was more to the decision than straightforward economics: We’ve heard the outlook will continue to be extremely tough for dairy farmers… This is affecting milk production and farm viability, which is devastating for farmers and the regional communities in which they live. The Labor Party has been threatening to impose a minimum farm-gate price. Will what Woolworths is doing help farmers? Only a bit. Milk prices are internationally set The so-called “milk wars” began on Australia Day 2011 when Coles announced it was cutting milk prices to A$1 a litre. Woolworths and Aldi followed suit. The milk market does not just consist of dairy farmers, supermarkets and customers. There are also the processors – companies such as the ASX-listed Murray Goulburn, Parmalat, Lion and Fonterra – that stand between farmers and supermarkets. Then there is the international market for dairy products like butter, cheese and milk powder. The biggest determinant of farm gate prices in Australia is not what the major supermarkets do, but world dairy prices. The Department of Agriculture says 37% of Australian milk production is exported. Add to that the roughly 35% that goes into locally consumed butter, cheese and milk powder that is subject to competition from imports. You can quickly see the prices of nearly three-quarters of the milk produced in Australia are set globally. Dairy Australia has a higher estimate. Because even fresh milk is subject to foreign competition, it believes 90% of the annual movement in farm-gate prices comes from changes in international prices. Those changes are beyond the effective control of Australian farmers and regulators. Many of them are the result […]

Australia Facing a Brick Wall of Blackouts

by Jerry Ellis and Sir Rod Carnegie The Chairman of the Saltbush Club, Mr Jerry Ellis, today warned that Australia needs more reliable baseload power. With the population and the economy growing, but with electricity availability and reliability in decline, we are racing headlong into a brick wall of blackouts. Recession and disruption will probably follow, bringing to mind those memorable 1990 words of Paul Keating: ‘This is the recession we had to have’. Except in this case the recession will be self-inflicted. Much of my working life was in the steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s. It operated 24×7, with large numbers of electric motors requiring a continuous supply of low-cost electrical power. Un-planned interruptions were rare, but when they occurred they were very costly. Now we face the prospect of planned and unplanned loss of power due to the rundown of base-load power capacity. It must be a nightmare for today’s steelmakers and aluminium refineries facing this growing crisis. It is essential that Australia rebalances economic imperatives against populist ideas regarding the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. A strong Australian economy is crucial to Australia’s welfare and will also make a valuable contribution to world prosperity. Australia produces a tiny proportion of the world’s carbon dioxide. Even total closure of our industry would have no detectable impact on carbon dioxide emissions or global climate. We urgently need new supplies of reliable energy from coal, gas, hydro or nuclear.” Jerry Ellis was supported by Sir Rod Carnegie, former Managing Director, CEO and Chairman of CRA (Rio Tinto) who said: “It is essential that Australia regains its reputation for cheap reliable electricity or we will lose our manufacturing and refining industries, returning only to our backbone industries of agriculture and mining”. Jerry Ellis once managed Australia’s biggest […]

Pipe bevelling machine for hard alloys

A portable pipe bevelling tool is ideally suited for machining hard alloys typical of subsea applications and pulls a thick chip without cutting oils. The Millhog Commander I.D. Clamping Pipe Bevelling Tool features large clamp pads with six contact points to evenly spread their holding forces and mount rigidly. Ideal for making precision joint preps on Super Duplex, P-91, and other high alloy pipes, this vibration-free pipe machining tool pulls a thick chip without cutting oils and transfers heat away from the pipe surface which prolongs blade life. Only requiring one mandrel and seven sets of clamps for the entire range of the tool, the Millhog Commander I.D. Clamping Pipe bevelling Tool can prep all schedules of pipe from 95.25 mm I.D. to 355.6 mm O.D. This tool can perform 37-1/2 bevels, compound, counterbore, and J-preps. A 3HP pneumatic motor is standard; an 1800W electric and hydraulic motors are optional.

Demand for higher quality parts and products to drive generative design

Generative design enables the design of lighter, cheaper components while maintaining strength and solidity, ultimately creating a higher quality product. For that reason, the adoption of generative design software is taking off in aerospace and defence, automotive, footwear and clothing, furniture, industrial machines, and oil and gas industries and leading to an uptick in engineering throughput in each of them, finds ABI Research, a market-foresight advisory firm providing strategic guidance on the most compelling transformative technologies. “The rise of the sharing economy and additive manufacturing will drive both demand for and the ability to produce higher-quality goods,” explained Pierce Owen, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “Generative design expands design possibilities by creating shapes different from those that humans would create. It idealizes the design by creating something that best fits the constraints to optimise the products for various requirements.” For several years now, industrial companies have used geometric topology optimisation – eroding the geometric shape of a product given a set of constraints to improve performance – and are using it more as the use cases for additive manufacturing have increased. Generative design takes that another step by creating, or generating, the geometric shapes from an engineer’s requirements rather than changing existing shapes. Also, unlike topology optimisation, generative design creates many iterations, variations and/or alternatives for engineers to compare, rather than simply removing unnecessary pieces or particles. Additive will drive both generative design and topology optimization as it provides greater build freedom to fulfill a wider variety of designs. Traditional Computer-Aided Design (CAD) vendors such as Dassault Systèmes, Siemens and recently, PTC, already have or will have embedded generative design capabilities within their CAD environments as plug-ins or kernels. PTC acquired Frustum in November 2018 to do exactly that within Creo. Several of Siemens products, including NX, NX Nastran, HEEDS, […]

Revolutionary power-efficient solution for network energy infrastructure

An exclusive Australian supplier of DC Power Converters and energy solutions, Powerbox Australia, recently released EnergyHub by Enatel Energy at Comms Connect Melbourne Exhibition and Conference. More than 1500 people from a broad range of industries attended this years event seeking out the very latest communications information, technologies and solutions. EnergyHub is a complete lithium-ion power solution for providers of power utilities, telecommunications and security, as well as transport operators. These industry sectors have historically relied on lead-acid battery solutions and worn the associated operation costs. Incorporating both DC rectifier technology and integrated lithium-ion battery modules, EnergyHub from Enatel Energy offers a truly dynamic li-ion solution. EnergyHub offers significant financial benefits because solutions are more efficient and less maintenance is required over the long term, vastly reducing operational costs when compared to the conventional lead-acid type batteries still widely used. As organisations begin to work with brand new EnergyHub, they will notice that this revolutionary system allows for much greater energy density and depth of discharge. “EnergyHub, which utilises li-on batteries, leaves more room for revenue-generating network equipment. Tight cell management from Enatel’s proprietary BMS in combination with the new RM848HE Rectifiers allows for optimised charging/discharging to improve system functionality,” said James Rutty, Business Development Manager of Powerbox Australia. “In addition, the EnergyHub requires zero set-up cost, can be easily scaled up to meet changing load demands and it shares a hot pluggable interface with EnergyPak battery modules to maximise usability.” According to Mr Rutty, safety of the system is ensured with the use of ‘Cold Terminal Design’, which stops voltage from travelling through the battery’s power and control pins to cut off the supply of current when it’s not connected to the charger. EnergyHub offers complete transparency of all energy data including battery cycle life, depth of discharge information, […]

Automation could revive Australia’s manufacturing industry

By Peter Hern, Country Manager, Oceania, Universal Robots Since 2016, the Australian manufacturing industry has experienced ongoing public scrutiny for the closure and offshoring of manufacturing, especially within the automotive sector, due to the high costs of labour. However, there is now opportunity for Australia to revive this industry. This requires a period of substantial change with the implementation of new, autonomous technologies. With these technologies, companies can be more efficient in countries where labour is expensive. Disruptive technologies and advanced automation, such as collaborative robots, or cobots, can help regenerate the dwindled manufacturing industry in Australia. This would allow Australia to compete on a global scale and contribute to global supply chains. A recent report by Bain and Company, Labour 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality¸ has forecast that automation will create an economic boom over the next decade, offsetting a slowing in labour growth, something Australia needs to ensure it is a part of. Competing on a global scale Deloitte’s Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index revealed that as the digital and physical worlds of manufacturing converge, advanced technologies are becoming ever more important at company level and in global competitiveness. Technology-intensive sectors are dominating the global manufacturing landscape in advanced economies and allow a strong path to achieve or sustain competiveness. However, even while being an advanced economy, Australia is ranking at 21st on this index. Germany is at the forefront of advanced automation, with industry 4.0 being a whole-of-country strategy to strengthen the economy through manufacturing. At this current time, Australian manufacturers are falling behind their global counterparts in the adoption of industry 4.0, and as a nation, must embrace the digital transformation of manufacturing to compete as a player in global supply chains. Bringing back jobs Between November 2016 and November 2017 the manufacturing industry […]

Gloucester Resources court decision benefits our competitors

Statement by Greg Evans, Chief Executive Last week’s decision by the NSW Land and Environment court to decline a development application for the Rocky Hill coal mine is detrimental for jobs and economic opportunities in regional NSW. It also places the approval process for new resource investment in a position of confusion and uncertainty. The beneficiaries from the latest NSW court decision will be producers with spare production capacity including those in the United States, Canada, Russia and Mongolia. Further, the decision potentially presents a set of new obstacles that producers in NSW could face with expansion and new mine approvals. Industry analysis by Commodity Insights in late 2018 relating to metallurgical coal demand, forecasts an increased import requirement in Asia of close to 100 million tonnes annually by 2030. In part this will be met by increases in output from other countries to the detriment of projects such as Rocky Hill. The potential missed economic opportunity is even greater if we reject new thermal coal developments. The basis of the court knock back includes the view that the project will add to global greenhouse gas emissions. The court indicates it can consider as part of its decision the greenhouse emissions from coal as it is used in the making of steel in another country. In other words, if this rationale became accepted all our resource exports would have to account for the emissions applying to their downstream use, including gas, iron ore and thermal coal. However, under the Paris Agreement it’s up to individual countries to put in place Nationally Determined Contribution plans to deal with emissions at their source. It’s not about the unilateral banning of particular industries or commodities in supplier countries. Of course, the United States, a significant coal exporter, is not even part of the […]

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