Tell readers what you do?

SGESCO-MAX is a specialist in heavy vehicle safety. We design and manufacture a range of innovative, high-quality solutions to help solve our customer’s complex safety challenges.

Some of our key safety systems include:

–       Anti-rollaway brake system

–       Blindspot monitoring (radar and vision)

–       Pedestrian protection (Artificial Intelligence)

–       Occupant safety on buses

SGESCO-MAX enables customers to achieve their Chain of Responsibility (CoR) primary duties by providing greater community safety.

We manufacture our solutions at our Brisbane-based factory at Archerfield.

As SGESCO-MAX’s Managing Director, my role is to ensure that the company continues to add value to our customers and stay relevant. I’m committed to creating a great workplace for our staff, paying our suppliers on time, building strong partnerships, and providing excellent customer service.

Another significant part of my role is ensuring we have the right systems in place. My experience in IT taught me the value of technology in driving business success.

What recent developments in the company have made it more refined with processes? 

Since our inception in 1962, efficiency has been embedded in our culture with the motto ‘Economy through Efficiency’. However, our transition in 2020 from a service to a manufacturing-oriented business opened the door for a review of our procedures and processes, given the shift and new focus.

The review highlighted that the legacy ERP system was hampering the business – with many processes dedicated to what the system could do instead of what the company needed. Hence, the goal is to find a new system that would enable our business to move forward.

The technology used?

We implemented the Wiise Enterprise Resource Planning system, based on Microsoft’s Business Central, around 18 months ago.

Your company is now more manufacturing focussed…explain the transition?

For the first 58 years, SGESCO-MAX was a service-oriented company providing auto-electrical and automotive services. The transition to manufacturing has seen a full restructure of the business, creating a dedicated Research and Development team, a new Sales and Marketing team, and a Product Support Specialist – functions needed to support our growth and the development and use of products across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

We also set up an Authorised Dealer Model across ANZ to enable scalability and provide greater customer support. This formalised approach has enabled us to provide training and supporting documentation to make installing and maintaining our products efficient.

We’ve also carried out several renovations of the building to make it more fit-for-purpose.

Has this resulted in gains for the company?

Yes, we saw immediate gains and efficiencies by having the Wiise system. It manages all our Accounts Receivable and Payable, Payroll, Ordering, Purchasing, Inventory Management, and Manufacturing functions in a single platform. We’ve continued to realise more benefits through our new online store, which is tightly integrated into Wiise.

From a manufacturing perspective, we’re continuing to mature our use of the in-built schedule planning and capacity management tools. Our initial focus after implementing Wiise was to ensure that our BOMs (Bill of Materials) and Routings (migrated from the legacy system) were accurate and complete.

We’ve recently implemented a reporting frontend based on Microsoft Power BI, which gives the Operations GM insights into the manufacturing shop floor through order progress, variances in materials and capacity, completion rates, and future needs.

We could not have achieved everything that we have now in such a short period of time without Wiise. The business is in such a better place. The investment has been absolutely critical to the survival and scalability of our business.

How are you finding current business conditions?

Business conditions have been positive, with the company continuing to see YoY growth. It comes down to a few factors:

• Desire and commitment to innovate
• Understanding the market opportunities
• Delivering excellent customer experiences and building great relationships with our suppliers
• Maintaining our focus on our core products and segments and not being too diverse
• Expanding into new industries and regions

How do you find the right staff?

Finding the right staff has been difficult for some time now, and unfortunately, this challenge isn’t going away soon. It means that we’ve to be more innovative, agile and efficient about manufacturing our products. We’ve recently embarked on a project to adopt the LEAN management framework, so I’m excited to look back in 12 months to reflect on the increased capacity and productivity that we’ve delivered.

Where do you see future business opportunities coming from?

We are focused on expanding into new verticals and industries across ANZ and into new global markets. We also expect to uncover many improvement opportunities across all functions in the business through our new framework.