Asahi says a smart value chain is key to business success

Ahead of National Manufacturing Week (NMW), which starts tomorrow, Asahi Beverages has shared its recipe for success, having recently been named as one of Australia’s ‘Top 100 Manufacturers’ for 2019.

With Australia’s $383.2 billion manufacturing industry, which employs over 791,000 Australians, projected to achieve an industry growth rate of 1.2% over the next five years to $405.8 billion in 2023–24, companies like Asahi have an opportunity to build on existing successes.

As a major food product manufacturer, and one of 17 that made this year’s ‘Top 100’ compiled by IBISWorld analysts, Anna Reid, General Manager of Manufacturing of Asahi Beverages, said that building a smart value chain is key to success.

“Undoubtedly, there are numerous factors that contribute to a manufacturing company being a leader,” she said. “The fundamental attributes that have contributed to our business success and inclusion on this year’s list of leading manufacturers include having a clear strategic plan, a strong record of consistent and profitable growth, continued strong investment across Australia to improve our manufacturing and distribution facilities, improving efficiency across all areas of the business, driving continued innovation across the business, differentiating ourselves from competitors to attract great talent and having an extensive portfolio of great brands that Australians know and love.

“We are proud to be manufacturing in Australia and manufacturing some of the nation’s most loved brands.”

Those brands include Schweppes, Solo, Asahi Super Dry, Pepsi, Gatorade, Cottee’s cordials, Spring Valley and Vodka Cruiser.

“Major technological innovations are fuelling significant change throughout the world, with the manufacturing industry embracing the interconnectivity of new and emerging technology or Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0,” she said. “At Asahi, we’ve been building a strong collaborative partnership between our business’s information technology and operational technology functions to ensure we have the right infrastructure backbone. We’ve also focused on digitising our factories in a structured way to achieve data standardisation and optimisation, which offers real-time analytics. Additionally, the agile learning approach we’ve adopted, focusing on process improvement and deliberate experimentation, coupled with embedding a problem-solving mindset amongst our employee base, have also been key contributors to our success.”

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