Car industry discipline rubs off on medical device manufacturing |
Former Holden workers Adam Williams and Derek Rogers are working for Micro-X to help streamline production. An emerging medical device company is turning to the car industry to streamline its manufacturing. Micro-X has established its headquarters in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, in preparation for the production of its lightweight x-ray machines. Managing Director Peter Rowland said Micro-X had successfully produced an 80kg mobile x-ray machine – just a fraction of the size and weight of the 500-600kg machines traditionally used in hospitals. He said Micro-X had the rights to apply technology from a company in the United States that was commercialising the carbon nanotubes as the electron emitter within an x-ray tube. The company has recruited four workers from the Holden car manufacturing plant in Elizabeth, which is slated for closure in 2017, including Adam Williams. “The idea of sourcing talent from the car industry has proven to be an absolute breakthrough because it’s a mindset that nobody – at least in my knowledge – has ever thought of applying to medical devices,” Rowland said. “What I love about the car industry is the rigor and discipline because you cannot achieve the quality and cost and reliability that the car industry achieves without a lot of discipline and a lot of hard work. “Just bringing that thinking from Holden into our plant has been brilliant. “(Adam) said ‘at Holden,– there’s no variable speed on the production line – when you press go on a new model every operation has to take 100 seconds. It can’t be 105 because that stops the line so we put months and months of planning and checking and testing and training to make sure it happens in the number of seconds they budgeted every single time’. “The management out at Elizabeth is […]
