Everything is a factory: lessons for large infrastructure projects, from designing and building Gigafactories

Everything is a factory: lessons for large infrastructure projects, from designing and building Gigafactories

Large infrastructure projects worldwide suffer from similar issues – they are often delivered late, over budget and for expediency sometimes not to the original design intent which then compromises their longevity.  This is primarily because they are complex undertakings – there are a lot of people, companies, governments involved with getting a lot of components into the right place at the right time and assembled the right way – and invariably there are hurdles at every stage.  There are parallels with the design, installation and operation of a Gigafactory. 

How are companies building these massive manufacturing projects at speed and delivering on the original design intent? 

How do the factories evolve during operation as the need arises? 

What if we redefined a large infrastructure project as a giant, distributed assembly factory? 

What can we learn for the deployment of renewable energy megaprojects, new power grids and other infrastructure if we look at it from the lens of a manufacturer rather than a project administrator? 

This presentation will review some of the lessons from designing, building and operating some of the largest factories on earth in tight time frames, and suggest ways that these could help improve infrastructure deployment at all scales.

Speakers

Dr. Michael Lucas 

FIEAust CPEng

Founder and Principal Advisor at Manufacturing Catalyst, is a Chartered Professional Engineer and Fellow of Engineers Australia with three decades of experience in manufacturing and intralogistics optimisation and automation across four continents and a diverse array of industries.

He has had pivotal roles in landmark manufacturing projects such as Tesla's gigafactory design and supply chain optimisation in California.  He led the Industrialisation team at solar innovator 5B, significantly speeding up their manufacturing and assembly systems, and was the Global Engineering Manager for Transformer oil re-refiner Hydrodec, responsible for the deployment of a world first modular oil re-refining facility in Canton, Ohio enabling grid level transformers to be refilled with better quality oils. 

Michael has a past project portfolio with several billion in capital value, including automotive, clean energy, food and beverage, furniture, and prefabricated construction projects. With several patents arising from his work, he has been at the forefront of advancing sustainable manufacturing and material flow technologies with robotics, AI, and automation.

Michael started Manufacturing Catalyst with one goal – to help people who make things, make things better.