Excellence in Technology

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You’re thinking about entering the Excellence in Technology Category? Excellent!

Nominations are open for consideration of the Excellence in Technology at the annual Hunter Manufacturing Awards.

Registration takes 5 minutes. Applications are open from 8 May and close 19 July. If you have been unable to meet the deadline, please contact HMA to make an alternate arrangement.

Please read the following definition before completing your application form to ensure you are submitting in the correct category.

Definitions & Guidelines

To assist you with this application the judges have provided some guidelines.

When providing your answers, the “For Example” / guidelines we have suggested for each question are not intended to be exhaustive. They are designed as examples and prompts to help you understand the judges’ requirements. It is important that where you state that you have evidence in support of the specific question you are answering, you need to provide that evidence – usually, a generic brochure or company overview is NOT sufficient.

Technology

Nominations are open to any manufacturing company that has developed a new technology or has applied existing technology in a novel way that has increased sales, improved the productivity or increased the quality of its goods or services and positively impacted on safety due to the introduction of the new technology (provide evidence of these effects where possible).

The technology may be in partnership with a technology provider, but, the category is open only to the manufacturing company that employs those undertaking that technology.

The judges will look for examples of innovations in technology that include, but are not limited to, new invention, performance, technology development, process improvement and e-commerce or e-trading applications.

This category is only eligible for companies who initially develop / employ the use of the new technology for internal process improvement.

It maybe that a new line of business / product can be offered externally from the new technology, however, the initial intent is to improve its own internal process.

Note – Applicants may find that their application into the Excellence in Technology category may also be a ‘fit’ for another category, such as marketing, product design, innovation, manufacturing process, export, etc. By adapting the information to fit the criteria of other categories you give yourself the opportunity for your product, process etc to be profiled in more than one sector.

Download the full application pack and category questions

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Example Information Required

Each of the listed criteria must be addressed and where possible, evidence provided

Photographs, drawings, etc, may be included as an attachment to this application form and should be labelled clearly for the judges. E.g. Question 3 – evidence provided

Please address the following criteria and restrict the content of each criteria response to 200 words or less. For example; Question 1 can only have a maximum of 200 words.

Maximum File Size

The entry form allows a maximum file size of 20MB to be uploaded. If you are having issues with the size of your example files, please contact Carol McEwan on info@hma.org.au or call 0438 242 899 to make an alternate arrangement to send your file(s).

Download the full application pack and category questions

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Judging Criteria & Values

Below is a breakdown of each question, the criteria judges will be looking for and the value of each question.

Question Judging Criteria Value
  1. Please describe the technology.
  • What was the problem you faced internally (e.g. high energy costs, low productivity, safety issues) and how has the technology works to mitigate those issues?
  • Is it a software or a hardware improvement, or both?
  • Did the company develop it in-house or in collaboration?
  • Other

5 / 60
  1. a) What were the origins of the technology breakthrough? b) Why do you believe it novel? (Include any evidence of Intellectual property – Patents, trademarks)

a)

  • How was the idea conceived?
  • Did you look for an off the shelf solution first?
  • How did you test the early idea?
  • Was management convinced straight away with the idea?

b)

  • Novel ideas are new, original, unconventional and not quickly recognised/obvious by people in the industry.
  • Has your company decided to protect the idea/brand in a patent or trademark?
  • Other

10 / 60
  1. What markets are now accessible as a result of this new technology?
  • Does the technology allow for the development of new products or services that can now be offered to customers?
  • Does it help the company to enter a new market segment? E.g a new machinery developed that will allow the company to produce high-grade material in a specific industry.
  • Other

10 / 60
  1. How will the technology be competitive in the target markets?
  • Describes the current target market and the competitor analysis?
  • How does the target market currently being served by the competitors?
  • Other

5 / 60
  1. What will be the strength of its value proposition or cost benefit performance? E.g. what are the benefits the market will derive from the product or service, what alternative options does the market have for the product or service? Is cheaper, faster, lighter etc.
  • Quantification of the benefits/value proposition would be great (e.g. amount of productivity increased, amount of labour required, % of margin increased, etc).
  • Other

10 / 60
  1. What is the projected impact on your business performance as a result of the technology?
  • Potential improvement to this year’s budget and performance.
  • Potential future sales increase
  • Other socio-economic impact to employee.
  • Other

10 / 60
  1. What are the positive social and environmental impacts of the technology?
  • Does the technology help to reduce carbon footprint, or reusing/reducing waste?
  • Does the use of the technology has social benefit to the community and/or allow customers from lower income to access its benefits?
  • Other

10 / 60

Download the full application pack and category questions

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Previous Year's Winner

Representative – Keiran Moore – With Sponsor- Strata Worldwide (Australia) – Ceo – Tony Lobb

2017 Winner – Airpak Sheetmetal

Airpak Sheetmetal has invested in several advanced machinery to improve their productivity in a declining sheetmetal fabrication industry. And instead of scaling down like everyone else in the industry, Airpak decided to upscale production. The idea came from their analysis that the current process on manual airduct cutting and shaping is very tideous process and often dangerous. They embarked on initial technology investment in 2007 on a plasma cutter and tdf machine which proved to be beneficial on output and safety; and followed on with further systematic technology investment. Their technology acquisition has allowed Airpak Sheetmetal to bid on much larger project and resulted in annualised growth of 16% over the period of 2012-2017. The company has also more than tripled its workforce from 6 (in 2007) to 23 people (in 2017).

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Apply Now

Please Register first before completing your application form. Registration takes 5 minutes and close 19 July. Applications are open from 8 May and close 19 July.

Follow the below link to start the registration process.

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