AMPC innovation managers program: new cohort of graduates
Thirty innovation managers embedded within processing plants across Australia have now graduated from a unique program run by AMPC which delivered both cutting-edge solutions to shared industry challenges and remarkable career development.
Over the past three years, AMPC's Innovation Managers (IM) program saw the group participate in a range of sessions where they explored new ways of thinking to identify solutions that could reach commercial reality.
At the graduation in Brisbane last week, each gave an overview of the project they have implemented to solve a key challenge for the industry.
From artificial intelligence and machine learning to carbon offsetting, market analysis, wellbeing programs and recruitment, a swathe of projects have come to fruition.
The IM program is a major investment by AMPC in innovation adoption and people development. The program has also been strengthened with professional development components, ensuring industry's innovation capability continues to grow.
AMPC's Amanda Carter said it involved providing funding and operational support for processors to engage a dedicated innovation employee in their business to help support research and development projects and adoption.
"The objective was to provide a resource within processing plants that focuses on innovation to work on key industry projects and then to be collaborative - to bring great minds together to share information and know-how,” she said.
“Finally, it was designed to create a conduit between AMPC research and development and individual processing plants.”
Innovation and creativity specialist Dr Irena Yashin-Shaw, from the Global Intrapreneurs Institute, who worked as a consultant with the cohort in their final year, said the program was about liberating intrapreneurial talent and using that talent to implement really exciting, very future-focused projects that would actually ripple not just throughout individual plants but across the entire red meat processing industry.
"What is very interesting about this program is the way the development has been advocated for from the top down," she said.
"That is a very progressive step. Often you find innovation programs are driven by people who are really enthusiastic about what they do but they're not always supported from the very senior levels of the wider industry. In this case, that support is there and that separates out the red meat processing sector.”
AMPC extension and adoption manager Dave Carew said a number of very exciting projects were presented at the graduation and the level of detail and professionalism involved had been truly incredible.
"We are very lucky to have such passionate people involved in the red meat processing industry," he said.
Program graduate Megan Williams, sustainability and innovation manager at G & K O'Connor in Victoria, said the experience had genuinely shifted how she operates.
"I'm now less about having the immediate answers and more about building a case and bringing people with me," she said.
Casino Food Company projects and innovation manager Kalani Moss said the program had been an amazing launch pad for her career.
"When I first stepped into this role I was in my own little bubble but this exposed me to so many different people within the industry, the processes and innovations they are following and also the potential and the opportunities we all can be seeking out," she said.
