Page 42 - Food&Drink September 2019

SUPPLIER SPOTLIGHT
SMC celebrates 60 years
SMC Corporation has a rich heritage and an enviable track record, having grown from humble beginnings in Tokyo to become a global powerhouse in automation and pneumatics. Lindy Hughson caught up with ANZ managing director Wayne Driver to talk past and future.
LEFT: The SMC team celebrated turning 60 at Foodtech Qld earlier this year.
BELOW: Wayne Driver, managing director SMC Australia and NZ.
OEMs are able to build into their machines,” he says.
“OEMs are looking for more than a supplier partner in SMC – they want a company that can offer solutions.”
Driver says that while many companies are moving towards online portals for customer service, and SMC is developing one locally too, the company holds firm that maintaining a strong sales team in the field and on the phones is most important. SMC has over 80 salespeople across ANZ, which means OEMs and end users enjoy a quick response time from SMC.
“We’re not just a supplier after all, we’re a manufacturer ourselves. We can empathise with all the challenges our customers face, like the vagaries of currency and labour shortages,” he says, noting that 30 per cent of SMC product supplied in the region is locally manufactured, and 70 per cent is brought in from Japan, with costs impacted by exchange rate fluctuations.
Underpinning all the efforts in sales and engineering, though, is the focus on innovation across the entire company.
“It’s simple, really: our survival depends on our customers’ survival. We are compelled to help them be competitive by continually investing in improving our own processes, technology and customer service and technical support,” Driver says. ✷
IN April 1959, a metallurgist named Yoshiyuki Takada took a leap of faith and started a small company in his house in Tokyo, manufacturing sintered metal elements for air filters. Its name
– Sintered Metal Company – was abbreviated to SMC, a brand that is today synonymous with market leadership in engineering, pneumatic control equipment and industrial automation, as well as its origin of sintered filters and filtration equipment.
On the day I’m interviewing Wayne Driver, who heads up the Australasian arm of SMC, he tells me that it’s Mr Takada’s 93rd birthday.
“Despite his advanced years, he remains active in the company as chairman, continuing to impart his invaluable experience and wisdom to the global leadership team,” Driver says.
Driver’s deep respect for the company’s founder is evident as he relates the story of the company’s humble beginnings, and its subsequent evolution and expansion over the past six decades, both globally and in the Australasian region.
FAMILY FIRST
“SMC is at heart a family business, and this is something that is important to Mr Takada, even now sixty years on as an $8bn company with close on 20,000 employees,” Driver says. “What’s also refreshing is that Mr Takada believes to be successful in overseas operations you need to have local management running the show.
company’s values – trust, respect and personal accountability – and the rest all falls into place.
“Of course, for success as a business you need to have great products and a supportive infrastructure, which our organisation has built up on a global scale,” Driver adds.
“But it still comes down to people, and the successes we have achieved to date are due in
“ Australia is a high labour cost country, but our advantage is the quality and innovation OEMs are able to build into their machines.”
Of course, all subsidiaries have access to support on all levels from the Japanese company, but we are responsible for our own decisions in the business.”
For Driver, the most important decisions revolve around people. “It may sound like a cliché, but our people really are our most important asset,” he says. “Surround yourself with the right people in the right positions, whose focus and intent are aligned with the
large part to our ability to retain knowledge in the business and also to bring in ‘new blood’.”
CUSTOMER CARE
Asked what he believes are SMC customers’ main challenges, Driver says that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and their customers, are fighting to stay competitive.
“Australia is a high labour cost country, but our advantage is the quality and innovation
42 | Food&Drink business | September 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au