ENDEAVOUR AWARDS 2021 2021 Endeavour Awards winners announced Moving forward from the COVID-19 pandemic, Manufacturers’ Monthly was thrilled to celebrate Australian innovation and excellence at the 2021 Endeavour Awards.
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FTER a frustrating wait from COVID-19 postponements, the 2021 Endeavour Awards were held in Melbourne last month. Key industry faces had the chance to reflect on the last couple of years – and the resounding atmosphere reflected a gratitude to be able to celebrate Australian manufacturing with each other, instead of over the internet. As always, the awards featured a high calibre set of companies with innovative ideas, technologies and products. It’s no secret that Australian manufacturing has been challenged by the economic climate brought about by COVID-19, so the event was dedicated to the entrants, finalists and winners who embraced change and hard work to advance the industry. There was a jump in the number of quality nominations in individual categories this year, despite any anticipated flow-on effect from the economic downturn. Manufacturers’ Monthly congratulates all the winners and finalists and was so pleased by the large turnout to the
prestigious event.
Takeaways from the judges Peter Canavan, senior policy officer at AI Group said the Endeavour Awards provide a great opportunity to showcase the exciting ways that Australian manufacturing companies are dealing with a rapidly changing world. “Not for many years has Australian manufacturing shown itself to be so vital for our country’s prosperity and security, and the Endeavour Awards highlight just what our industry can achieve,” he said. “What stood out for me this year was the innovations that address some of the key issues facing the world: our need to develop products friendlier to the environment; our need to engage more deeply with digitisation and the Internet of Things; and our need to find innovative ways to skill up our workers. To me this demonstrates that our manufacturers might be working locally but they are coming up with
global solutions.” Scott Martin, group leader of applied physics at CSIRO concurred saying that every year there are impressive examples of inward and outward innovation – inward innovation bringing new technology form around the world into Australian markets and manufacturing processes; and outward innovation developing Australian-grown technology for local and export markets. “I think it’s wonderful when I see companies getting recognition for some of the really innovative stuff happening here in Australia,” he said. “But the awards also show that innovation need to be cutting edge technology to be really impactful. If it’s something that drives more adoption of what’s already available, this can be equally or if not more valuable.” “There were a couple nominations which were extremely difficult to judge between this year. These were scalable and very easy ways for manufacturing companies to
implement industry 4.0, without a huge amount of investment in equipment and automation, there were some really nice ways to collect data on existing manufacturing lines.” “Companies are applying a lot of machine learning algorithms to put on top of data. We really need the Australian industry to adopt industry 4.0 and automation more strongly, and I thought this was a really strong step in the right direction.” Matthew Young, manufacturing innovation manager Innovative Manufacturing CRC said he was surprised about the variety of applications for different sectors in the nominations. “It’s important to encourage Australian manufacturers not to fly under the radar,” he said “We definitely need to showcase Australia. Some still think that there’s not much going on here but there’s a lot of innovation, as evidenced by the nominations. The innovation in manufacturing is an enable for broader Australian industry.”
Industry gathered to celebrate Australian manufacturing at the 2021 Endeavour Awards.
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Manufacturers’ Monthly MAY 2022 47
