ANU, Ford in $2.5m deal

By Damon Shorter

The ANU has joined Ford Motor Company and Deakin University in a $2.5 million joint research project to improve car production.

The project, supported by some of Australia's biggest companies including BHP and Castrol Australia, will establish a new centre to streamline and improve the processes by which car panels and parts are pressed out of sheet steel.

Known as STAMP (Stamping Technology for Automotive Manufacturing Processes), the centre will be based at Ford's plant in Geelong, Victoria, which will export the technique to Ford plants around the world.

Dr Michael Cardew-Hall, of the ANU Department of Engineering, said that more than two thirds of the project's funding will be used to pay for postgraduate student positions.

"The beauty of the centre is that we will not be investing in any major infrastructure," he said. "We will be using the stamping plant in Geelong as an experimental laboratory."

ANU engineering students will gain valuable industry experience as part of the initiative. Masters and PhD engineering students from the ANU and Deakin University are expected to spend more than half their time at the Geelong plant, working with Ford employees on problems in the manufacturing process.

The centre was launched at Geelong earlier this month by the Victorian Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, Mark Birrell.

The ANU's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deane Terrell, said during the ceremony that the collaborative nature of the new centre provided an excellent example of how universities and industry could interact.

"This project shows that the companies involved have the vision to invest money in Australian-based research and development and that Australian universities have the capability to support industry's needs," Prof Terrell said.

The ANU's participation builds on a previous project in the Ford plastic plant coordinated by Dr Barry Newell from the Department of Engineering. Dr Newell is now involved in a similar project with Telstra.

Dr Cardew-Hall said the new centre helped bridge the gulf between industry and academia in Australia, and resulted largely from the ANU and Deakin University approaching Ford and offering their engineering expertise.

"We actually went to Ford and said: 'Do your problems coincide with our skills and interests in terms of the research we are doing?' One senior executive in Ford told us that nobody from a university had ever approached him and actually asked whether they had problems which they could help solve," he said.

Dr Cardew Hall said both he and the head of the engineering group from Deakin University, Professor Peter Hodgson, had worked for several years in the private sector and this experience made them more aware of the needs of industry.

"We are not your traditional academics. We have the industry mentality and have seen how these processes work from both sides of the fence, so we know how universities should be working with industry," he said.

For each student funded through the new centre, Ford will provide two staff to help mentor and assist them at the plant.

"The students coming out of the program will be very valuable to Ford because they will be technically qualified but also have some industry experience," Dr Cardew-Hall said. "Obviously Ford is hoping that they will inject some fresh ideas into the industry."

One ANU masters student from the Department of Engineering, Michael McLennan, has already spent approximately six months working at the stamping plant in Geelong.

"Students working at the plant don't just get technical training but they also have to learn how to manage their time and how to deal with the conflicting interests of the work place, and that is good for their overall education," Dr Cardew-Hall said.