What Young New Zealand Consumers Want

Do you know what the next generation of young Kiwis want?  Ad agency JWT did some research to find out and I found the results fascinating - being at the “young” end of the baby boomer generation, how would I know?!

I thought this important information for manufacturers, as we all need to focus on our end customer.  Even if you are supplying another business, you need to understand their end customer and what they value.

Jacqueline Smart at JWT compiled some slides on this research which are well worth a read. They discovered bigger shifts in attitude (focus is on 25-35 year olds) in this research than they have in past work. She referred to 6 major themes, which I summarise here...

Catherine Beard
027 463 3212 or cbeard@businessnz.org.nz

The manufacturing sector experienced improved levels of expansion during February, according to the latest BNZ - BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI). The seasonally adjusted PMI for February was 55.9 (5.2 points up from last month).

“After the January results that showed lacklustre expansion, the increase in February was more in line with what we’ve seen over the last two years.  Although all sub-indexes were positive, the fact that new orders recovered to show its highest value for over a year should flow through into PMI results in the coming months,” said Catherine Beard.

BNZ senior economist Craig Ebert said, “It’s a relief to see the PMI rebound from last month’s oddly low result. Both production and new orders jumped back up to healthy expansion territory. These were the main culprits for bringing the overall index down in January.” More...

A pilot manufacturing student internship from the Summer of Tech programme is proving mutually beneficial for a Lower Hutt business and a Wellington university student.

The Summer of Tech programme, which connects tertiary students with technology companies from the Wellington region, has been extended this summer to include manufacturing companies looking to incorporate technology into their products. More...

The health of our ecosystems underpins all aspects of New Zealand's economy. Join the Sustainable Business Council (SBC) on Thursday 26th March to hear speakers from the public and private sectors talk about how to identify business risks and opportunities arising from ecosystem change in NZ.

SBC member companies from key sectors of the NZ economy - Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd, Archeus, Contact, Fonterra and URS, an AECOM company - will talk about the business case for undertaking an Ecosystems Services Review (ESR) and how they assessed their dependencies and impacts on ecosystems. More...

Government Procurement is critical to the delivery of public services and contribution to the economy, with government agencies spending approximately $39 billion each year (around 18% of GDP) across a wide range of goods and services from third-party suppliers. 

NZ Government Procurement’s annual business survey gives you the opportunity to feedback on your experiences of bidding for government contracts. They also want to understand your experience of government contract management. The survey is closing on 16 March. More...

Workshops where businesses can pose problems to teams of mathematicians are being held in New Zealand for the first time.

The workshops are a way for companies to pitch their problems to staff of Massey University's Centre for Mathematics in Industry, based at Auckland, who then work collaboratively to generate practical solutions through modelling, statistical analysis or computation. More...

Research shows that NZ needs 3,800 more students doing maths and physics at NCEA Level 2. We need the help of business to inform kids, teachers and parents about the opportunities in the marketplace and careers available to people with maths and physics qualifications.

This pipeline diagram is a good illustartion of the situation.

The latest Engineering to Employment (E2E) e-newsletter explains more about the Engineering E2E steering group’s goal
to help in achieving the Government’s target of an additional 500 engineering graduates each year from 2017. More...

EMA Manufacturing forum member Robyn De Bruin-Judge  has brought to my attention two really good papers on the latest thinking coming out of Europe on the next seismic shift in manufacturing, as they try to wrestle back more market share of global manufacturing. 

Robyn attended a Callaghan Innovation forum where Frank Wagner from the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering in Germany spoke. In essence, it's all about technology increasingly changing the way we work and evolving into manufacturing plant that is interconnected in a multitude of ways, able to self-correct etc. Issues to be addressed by technology include:

• Costs
• Lack of skilled labour, especially engineers
• Aging workforce.

I will add to this my take-outs from a visit to the USA and Canada at the end of last year.  Potential game changers being talked about were nanotechnology and the power of super-computing or big data to change the way we do business.

Check out the two papers here:

Think Act Industry 4.0 The new industrial revolution. How Europe will succeed

Securing the future of German manufacturing industry.

C Beard