• Strengths in manufacturing improvements, innovation, troubleshooting and investigations in a variety of technologies
• Ability to use broad background in the paint, medical equipment, electronics, ophthalmic, electrophotographic, laser industries and others to solve problems.
• Creative approach to developing new products/production processes and for improvements to existing ones. Innovative process development has led to a Patent, with IP also licensed in another industry.
• Solid exposure to mechanical, electrical, electronic & chemical engineering, polymer & physical chemistry and information technology disciplines whilst working on multidisciplinary teams.
• Creative approach in new product/process development for manufacturing environments.
• Has shown high level analytic and conceptual skills, applying lateral thinking to projects .
• Adaptable.

PhD in Applied Science, Uni. of South Aust.
BSc in Physics and Maths, Monash University.
Matriculation, Melbourne High School

• Completed a PhD thesis in Materials Science
• Chartered Chemist member of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute
• Committee member Joint Chemical Engineering Committee
• SA Enterprise Workshop
• Courses in:

• Materials science


• Report writing


• Data analysis techniques to monitor manufacturing production


• Spreadsheets/wordprocessing/databases and a wide range of other applications


• Computer remote communications and interfacing


• Statistics and statistical software


• Quality Assurance Techniques


• Multiple Linear Regression


• Taguchi methods

CAREER HISTORY:

CAREER HISTORY DETAILS:

Jan 2007 - present UNIVERSITY of SOUTH AUSTRALIA, Adelaide, Aust.
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in Sustainable Energy Centre (part time)

Jun 1995 - present JOHN POCKETT & ASSOCIATES, Adelaide, Aust.

Consultancy in Product and Process Improvements, Industrial R&D and IT.

• Variety of projects for a number of clients. The major area has been in providing technical expertise to small manufacturers. My IP has been licensed in a patent taken out by a client.

Jul 2007 - Oct 2007 FLINDERS UNIVERSITY, Adelaide, Aust.
Research Contract - Materials & Energy Group.

Mar 2004 UNIVERSITY of SOUTH AUSTRALIA, Adelaide, Aust.

Molecular and Biomedical Sciences Dept. Uni. of South Aust. is working on a joint project with the Waite Institute of Adelaide University to develop automated in-line monitoring of a variety of parameters during the fermentation process of wines. This is in order to assist modern winemakers in improving the process control and quality of their wines.

Research Contract - Moleccular and Biomedical Sciences

Reporting to the leader of the project

Related Achievements:

• Set up a relatively low cost UV to Near Infra-Red spectrometer with appropriate instrumentation, hardwarre, and software for automating in-line timed measurementsa of alcohol content, colour and phenolics in wines being fermented.

• Developed data analysis techniques to robustly extract the weak signal of alcohol content from the Near Infra-Red measurements, a task that had not proven feasible for other members of the group.

Jan 1998 - Oct 2004 Ian Wark Research Institute, UNI. of SOUTH AUST., Adelaide, Aust.

Parttime/fulltime completing a PhD thesis in Polymer Science.

Since 1989 there has been a much greater weight of polymers than metal sold around the world.

• Project on crystallinity and phase separation in Nylon blends. Seminars have been given internationally and papers & posters have been presented at international/national conferences.

• Wide variety of test equipment used and interfaced to computer networks

Jul 1995 - Jul 1996 RESEARCH LABORATORIES of AUSTRALIA, Adelaide, Aust.

RLA independently developed the "xerographic" photocopying process at the same time as Xerox. RLA has gained a worldwide reputation in the field for its electrophotographic contract research and carries out research mainly for large international companies. It employs approximately 35 people.

Developing new processes on contract

Reporting to the Manager of the Laboratories

Related Achievements:

• Developed a novel electrographic printing process for a large Japanese client. Australian, US & European Patents were granted. Several innovative factors are incorporated in the patent. The project was completed on time and the results demonstrated successfully to the overseas client.

• Modified and wrote image analysis scripts/macros in C to automate quality assesment of critical high technology printing

Sep 1984 - Apr 1995 SOLA OPTICAL, Adelaide, Aust.

SOLA is the world’s largest manufacturer of (combined) ophthalmic, sun and safety lenses. It employs approximately 3000 people worldwide.

1993-95 Project Officer in manufacturing group

Reporting to the Manager of Mould Manufacture Australia. 25 - 75 employees manufacturing specialist glass moulds for international ophthalmic lens casting sites in the SOLA group.

Related Achievements:

• Analysed the total needs of an information system to reduce transcription errors and labour costs. This identified the various steps throughout the production system, pointing to scheduling as a critical area for focus.

• Investigated technologies to provide individual barcodes on 2500 types of products in order to reduce transcription errors and labour costs and to improve scheduling. This allowed the reliable tracking of individual items through extreme production processes technically difficult to monitor, eg. 700^oC furnaces and caustic baths.

• Enabled the manager to query production and client service information from home by setting up secure remote communications to a Novell Netware network which was set up to aid production and intra-office efficiencies.

• Designed a specialist "Clean Room" with engineering consultants to meet the difficult and unusual production constraints of Laminar Flow cleaning stations in close proximity to dirty furnaces.

• Reduced reject rates from 30% to 10-15% in a critical production area by air filtration, solvent filtration and work procedure changes.

• Saved $225,000 per annum by doubling the lifetimes of expensive ceramic moulds.

• Facilitated a Productivity Group of production workers

1988-92 Manufacturing process improvements

Reporting to the R&D Physics Manager of the Research Centre.

80 employees in the Centre carrying out research for the international SOLA group.

Related Achievements:

• Maximised flexibility for production of glass moulds and ensured that polymer lenses better met specifications in some markets. This was achieved by totally altering specification tolerancing concepts.

• Obtained a better overview of whether production lenses met multiple specifications by displaying the information innovatively.

• Developed methods to respecify a wide range of glass moulds for lens casting. Improved production control over lens power in international casting sites was unambiguously shown by the above display techniques.

• Radically reduced testing from 2-3 months to 1-2 weeks with less resources in specifying glass moulds for introducing new optical polymers in the marketplace.

• Supervised three laboratory staff.

1984-88 Project Team Leader - Product/Process improvement

Reporting to the Group Process Technology Manager in the R & D Centre.

Related Achievements:

• Improved control over lens power in production processes on a world-wide basis by implementation of my investigation results on production factors influencing lens power.

• Setup a Clean Room and developed techniques to improve SOLA surface and internal lens quality in the marketplace

• Frequently managed the six Project Leaders and five junior staff whilst the Manager was away overseas.

Jun 1977 - Sep 1984 PHILIPS MICROELECTRONICS FACILITY, Adelaide, Aust.

Part of the worldwide Philips organisation. 250 employees at the facility designing and manufacturing integrated circuits, solar panels, transistors, diodes and thick film hybrid circuits, for Australian commercial and defence markets.

1981-84 Production/Development Engineer

Reporting to the head of Photovoltaics.

Related Achievements:

• Set up a solar cell encapsulation production line and microcomputer aided testing facility for cells and completed panels as part of a $1.2M plant to manufacture solar panels.

• Innovatively designed solar panels were sent to Europe for Philips high technology demonstration round-the-world yacht.

• Set up optical systems for testing cells and panels.

• Put forward a major submission to the Australian Standards committee for photovoltaics to represent Philips perspective.

1977-81 Quality Engineer

Reporting to the Quality Manager.

Related Achievements:

• Analysing and setting up all aspects of a Total Quality Management system for the plant with two others.

• Ensured manufacture of highly reliable microelectronic components by:

* setting up reliability testing equipment and procedures

* developing practical factory and acceptance production specifications

* measuring conformance to electronic specifications, both customised and published.

• Managed four staff carrying out conformance testing, reliability testing and audits of in-line production quality.

Mar 1975 - Jun 1977 UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE, Adelaide, Aust.

Research Assistant - Physical and Inorganic Chem. Dept.

Reporting to two lecturers (at different times).

Related Achievements:

• Devised and constructed an automatic gain control for a goniodiffusometer to compensate for light output variations, resulting in more stable measurements.

• Designed and made a novel microscope stage to allow heating a crystal to 600^oC for solid state phase change experiments.

Aug 1970 - Jun 1974 OPTISCHE INDUSTRIE NV, The Netherlands

The company develops and manufactures medical and military equipment. It employs 250-300 people.

Developing image intensifier tubes and vacuum technology

Reporting to the heads of Image Intensifier Tube and Vacuum Technology Groups (at different times).

Related Achievements:

• Increased the efficiency of vacuum evaporating thick layers and improved thickness uniformity on curved surfaces by computer simulating the process and optimising evaporation.

• Increased output and resolution of image intensifier phosphor screens by instigating and successfully developing electrophoretic deposition to replace conventional sedimentation techniques.

• Bettered competitors' X-ray image intensifier tubes by developing vacuum deposition of high resolution CsI(Na) input screens using innovative methods.

Dec 1966 - Aug 1969 DULUX PAINTS LTD., Melbourne, Aust.

Dulux is one of the largest paint companies in Australia

Leader, Instrumental Colourmatching for production depts

Reporting to the Central Research Lab. head of Process Technology

Related Achievements:

• Carried out a large feasibility study involving production colourmatching of 1000 gallon production batches to automotive standards by instrumental methods. It recommended introducing instrumental colourmatching of production paint batches for cost saving and not relying only on highly skilled visual colourmatchers.

• Improved the colourmatching program to automatically select the correct set of pigments for closely matching automotive colour samples This shortened the time to achieve a match and was more reliable in selecting the correct tinters to use for the match. This is important to compete economically in the crash repair paint market

• Managed four technical officers carrying out sample preparation and measurements.

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