Last week saw Midas host a cohort of Australian Executive MBA students completing a UK Industry tour. These senior Australian business leaders are completing an executive masters program whilst still being actively involved within their organisations. All students have a minimum of 10 years in leadership roles covering a diverse range of industry sectors including engineering and automation, ecommerce, retail, education, security and hospitality.
The intention for these tours and indeed visits is that students and hosts get the opportunity to discuss frankly and confidentially the challenges facing organisations today and some of the solutions to these challenges. The Australian Business School encourages connections to be made, ideas shared and business to be done.
Part of the Midas visit was to see first-hand how a company can grow from two traditional craft patternmakers to a C80 strong business and one that has embraced 5 premise moves and completed a full process diversification. Whilst there are still many parallels between our heritage of foundry pattern making, an area that we still work in today, there has been significant technology change over our 30 year history with the introduction of CNC machinery, CAD and computer aided inspection, not to mention the development of our unique MRIM tooling system, so it was our privilege to walk the students through the highs and lows of our journey.
In addition to gaining first-hand experience of a niche manufacturing process, the students were also able to see the tremendous improvements that the Midas team have made over the last 12 months as part of the Green Initiative - an aspect of Midas that is particularly pertinant bearing in mind the devastating bush fires that are currently destroying huge areas of Eastern Australia.
Discussions focussed around the importance of taking action and making positive change in whatever business, industry or sector you are in as all actions really do help to perpetuate large scale change by building momentum within the larger population. Alan Rance, Midas MD, discussed how ethical and responsible leadership can in fact drive significant and positive change, not only with regard to reducing the impact of climate change but also directly to the bottom line, an aspect that tends to resonate and attracts attention in all companies!!.
Here, for example, are a few facts about Midas savings:-
- Midas now uses 30 less large rolls of bubble wrap per month. Our packaging solutions are 100% paper based and zero plastic content!
- 100% of electricty used at Midas is renweable and therefore completely green
- Our new 3 phase Carboard Shredder enable us to re-use ALL cardboard that comes into our business as 100% Green packaging that can be used over and over again
- Midas has a policy of allowing NO Single use plastics on site
- New air compressors use 30% less energy (energy that is 100% green and cheaper than our previous source!). and reduce our CO2 emissions by 46 tonnes PA.
- 100% LED lighting across both factories reduces overall power consumption whilst proving better lighting to our workforce
You can find our more about the university and course that the students are following here. We would like to thank them for their time and attention during their visit and we wish them a safe onward travel and all the best for their future studies and endeavours.