Eaton 'campus' open for business

The finishing touches have been applied to Eaton's new Rowville site in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, where three previously stand-alone divisions of the local arm of the global power management specialist have been brought together under one roof.

Previously Eaton operated from three separate sites in Melbourne – the electrical business in Scoresby, the hydraulics business in Tullamarine, and the vehicle group in Bayswater/Kilsyth.

According to Martin Toomey, General Manager Australia & New Zealand, Vehicle Group, the decision to consolidate those operations at one location came about at the end of 2014.

"We were just about to come up to the end of some leases [at Tullamarine and Scoresby], and so the opportunity was to consider bringing the three locations together and creating what we would call an Eaton 'campus'," he says.

"The vehicle group has been in Australia since 1972 and we've had the Kilsyth site since 1973, when it was purchased. That asset has just been sitting there on 12 acres of land and hardly utilised, really. So we thought about what would be the opportunity if we monetised the asset at Kilsyth, brought the three businesses together, fitted out something to our specifications, and brought the head count into one location."

After the concept was approved at the end of 2014 the project moved swiftly. A recently constructed building was located in Rowville with 2500 square metres of office space and 6500 square metres of warehouse space. Essentially a shell, developer Qanstruct then fitted the building out to meet Eaton's needs, creating a bespoke solution.

The first staff began moving into the new site in early August, with the remainder on site by the end of that same month.

Valued at close to $10 million, the site places a strong emphasis on sustainability. Rainwater harvested from the roof, stored in tanks and then heated by solar panels. There are 'hot desks' for sales staff who spend much of their time on the road while the desks for permanently housed staff can be raised or lowered, allowing workers to sit or stand as desired.

"We tried to create a more modern, certainly more ergonomic workspace, but we also put a lot of thought into how people work, bringing collaborative teams closer together," says Mr Toomey.

"Sales and engineering and technical support are now co-housed and we've got finance across all of our industrial sector all sitting close to each other."

Mr Toomey says this brings about numerous benefits for staff.

"Take finance as an example. We had three [people] at each of the three former sites and now [here] we've got nine. Now all of a sudden they can cover each other's leave, they can go off and do some development, they can see career runway opportunities that didn't exist before.

"There's just something that's going to swell out of that that's better than having three stand-alone businesses. It's come together really, really well."

The site is effectively now the centre of Eaton's industrial sector for Australia, with Mr Toomey managing the campus, managing the industrial sector shared services team (supply chain and human resources across the vehicle group and the hydraulics arm), in addition to his role of managing the vehicle group.

However, while the benefits for staff are many, Mr Toomey says the co-location of the three arms under the one roof is also fostering a broader advantage for the business in general.

"What it's made us do is think differently about how we [Eaton] market ourselves," he says.

"Traditionally we would look at our individual business unit. I would target the transport industry, for example, while hydraulics may be looking at construction and mining and on-highway/off-highway, and electrical is looking at power quality, power distribution and telecoms.

"Now, however, we're starting to think about what we're doing as a business – as Eaton Australia – in the sectors of oil and gas. What are we doing in mining? What are we doing in sustainable energy? What are we doing in manufacturing?

"We're really starting to think with a sector-based approach and understanding. If you do a deep-dive into those sectors, where are the decision points taken about product selection? Who are the marriage brokers within those sectors who we should be going and talking to as Eaton with a view to becoming a part of that supply chain?

"We're thinking about having industry technical days here, where we invite the sectors in and see where the pennies start to drop."

Looking ahead, Mr Toomey says Eaton is examining a number of projects to further strengthen the business.

"For the year ahead it's about building sustainability into our business model," he says.

To that end he says Eaton is currently exploring a variety of contract manufacturing opportunities.

"We have a great remanufacturing team down here – we can do boutique manufacturing, we can do a lot of late-point definition manufacturing, and it doesn't just have to be for our products," he says.

"We're also starting to think about content per truck – what else can we be doing? We've got the hydraulics business, so where does that take us with hoses and fittings? We've got the electrical business, so what does that do for dash displays and other things? There are a number of opportunities where we can broaden the scope of the content per vehicle."

With its new Victorian facility and a renewed sense of in-house collaboration, Mr Toomey says Eaton Australia is positioned well to capitalise on a wider variety of market opportunities.

"It's all upside, it's positive," he says.

"Eaton is in a really strong position in Australia."