ENGINEERING Elevate your production line performance EQM has the know-how and the best equipment to optimise your food production systems and processes. www.engineeringnews.co.nz 17 Many of New Zealand’s leading food companies are using EQM Industrial as their ‘go to’ equipment firm for conveyors, rotary tables, gear drives, labelling machines and componentry. During 2015 EQM supplied general and tailored solutions that have improved the productivity for a range of food companies from dairy through to fruit and confectionery. A new food facility called on EQM to supply gear drives and conveyor components that was needed for a unique packing system. We recommended STM UMI & RMI Series as they are a smart gearbox that easily drives rotary tables and prevent the tall tubes from being knocked over. Another project which started out as designing a conveyor line solution, led to a new conveyor system with several conveyors of various types, as well as a rotary table. The food producer wanted a hygienic conveyor system for dry goods and needed to ensure there would be no buildup of dry matter along the production line. An apple packhouse has a new bagging trayfilling system created by EQM Industrial. Increased demand for bagged apples had caused some problems in the packing process so we reconfigured it and added packing lanes tailor designed for bagging fruit but also to tray pack Z packs and RDT. Nothing is sweeter than coming up with the right solution to a sticky problem and that’s just what EQM did with a conveyor system for a honey business that was looking for a new solution to de-box (a decontamination process) its hives. A new skate conveyor system was installed, which can easily be converted into an automatically motorised system. If you’re considering a new conveyor or a new way of improving productivity contact EQM. Freephone: 0800 147 847, Email: sales@eqm.co.nz, Web: www.eqm.co.nz ATTN16EQM04 Contact us today 0800 147 847 or visit www.eqm.co.nz EQM custom-made and standard conveyor systems EQM has a wide range of ABI and EQM iSeries stainless steel motors and gearboxes Food producers get moving with EQM EQM Trayfiller bagging system IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY alternative products and disruptive technologies that can be used to serve the same customer need. For this reason, a market definition based on what your product makes possible may be a better starting point for market-driving companies. Continuing our car example, not merely looking at ‘cars’ but for example ‘individual transportation’. Can we improve the system for ‘individual transportation’ so that it creates more value for the customer? Would that bake a bigger business pie also to ourselves? It is interesting to see what Tesla is doing in the US to build the electric car market. The lack of charging infrastructure is one of the main bottlenecks holding back the adoption of electric cars – and thus Tesla is investing heavily in building this infrastructure, even though their main business is producing electric cars and batteries. Look beyond planning – and embrace cooperation and experimentation Implementing market-driving strategies is all about consciously inducing systemic change. And by definition, systemic change is harder to predict and involves cooperation among various players. For this reason, companies aiming to implement market-driving strategies should foster entrepreneurial leadership and an organisational culture that accepts failure – as well as “firebreak” structures which limit its damage. Most market-driving strategies will involve some false starts and less-than-successful try-outs. The now-familiar Silicon Valley motto applies: Fail early and often. Additionally, successful market-drivers are very good in forming partnerships to improve their market shaping power. Interestingly, more often than not, these market-driving partners tend to include also current or future competitors. One of our interviewees crystallised this tactic succinctly: “We collaborate to create a bigger market, and only afterwards we compete to share it.” This is especially true if you aspire to commercialise a completely new product or service. Research provides unanimous evidence that mass markets emerge only after there are several competing providers for customers to choose from. Associate Professor Suvi Nenonen and Professor Kaj Storbacka work at the University of Auckland Business School’s Graduate School of Management. They teach in the MBA programmes, their research focuses on market and business model innovation and they are passionate about building bridges over the academia-practice gap. Professor Kaj Storbacka
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