News
Issue No. 17 - June/July 2004
Making a way forward
You would expect the challenge of skilling workers in the manufacturing industry would call for funding – and lots of it – to equip sites well enough to be relevant. With money so tight in educational circles, you might as well wish for the moon as several pieces of equipment worth more than $150,000 each.
To get such a much-needed project off the ground, you need entrepreneurial, lateral thinking. The kind Regency TAFE has put into its new Advanced Manufacturing Centre to be launched by The Hon Stephanie Key MP in June.
It’s a simple concept. The sponsors, equipment suppliers, each have loaned an example of their latest machinery to the Centre. For at least a year the machines will remain in place; when they are subsequently sold, the supplier/sponsors have agreed to replace them immediately with their latest model.
Software suppliers have come to the party with programs to drive the state-of-the-art machines. IT training takes place in two stages: training on basic CAD-CAM packages is required before advanced training in the Centre, on software dedicated to high-end manufacturing.
All this adds up to a very cost-effective marketing package for machinery and software suppliers, which works on two important levels. Supplier representatives are free to bring their clients to the Centre at any time to see their products in action. Not only do clients see the machines at work, they also see the software interface and the variety of projects the...
