2024 Thought Leaders: Cuong Vo

What growth opportunities do you predict for your industry in 2024?

Manufacturers today are faced with a number of simultaneous issues that affect their ability to maintain profitability — not least of which are increasing regulatory requirements, labour shortages and the need to achieve sustainability targets. While greater use of process automation can provide solutions to many of these problems, manufacturers may be challenged by how to choose the best solutions for their needs and to integrate these automation solutions into their existing operations and processes.

It is therefore necessary for businesses to seek out the right partners with the right technology leadership to help them to find their way clearly to the right solution.

The growth opportunity in this situation is therefore in being the partner that will be a willing and active collaborator with the end customer: providing the necessary support through each phase of transformation, from consulting engagement to analytics implementation; from infrastructure readiness assessment to support services. Providing these comprehensive services will be the main areas of opportunity for businesses in our industry to deliver significant value.

What are the three biggest challenges or threats facing your industry in 2024?

Firstly, it is clear to many of us that global economic growth will slow further in 2024, and there are also the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that could contribute to a worsening global financial outlook. Locally, we are still seeing high inflation and high energy prices, which has meant manufacturers are choosing to delay further investment unless there is a clear short-term return.

Secondly, manufacturers are faced with increasing regulatory expenses, increasing consumer demands and mandated sustainability targets.

These two issues lead to the need for a way to more easily managed scalability, both up and down as business needs change. Traditional manufacturing automation systems are difficult to scale, and can suffer unacceptable downtime costs when equipment fails. There is a need for more modular automation solutions that allow businesses the flexibility to cope with fluctuating demands.

Finally, today’s businesses are having to grapple with managing an aging workforce, upskilling workers to be able to cope with new requirements from automation and digitalisation and, at the same time, attract and retain young talent with increasingly higher demands regarding purpose, working models and lifetime career models. It is more important than ever for our industry to continue to broaden our support for STEM education and university partnership programs.

How is your company mentoring staff and developing workforce skills in 2024 and beyond?

Many industries, including us in process control and automation, are starving for people. Millions of skilled jobs are going unfilled, and many employers are at their wits’ end about how to fill them. To help alleviate this persistent crisis, industry has had to implement several remedies. These include applying labour-saving automation to reduce manual tasks, but also employing advanced digitalisation including artificial intelligence to enable less experienced employees to succeed in technically sophisticated jobs where they likely didn’t have the tools to succeed before.

Many manufacturing problems are very complex, with multiple facets, and draw on many disciplines. This means that many soft skills are necessary too. Team leaders need emotional intelligence and the ability to work well with others, so they can get their teams aligned to solve those complex problems.

Globally, Bürkert operates its own workforce development and enablement program. It puts employees on the pathway to gaining the skills they need, which has also proven to be a good way of retaining them.

The company also provides its employees a working environment where each individual has the chance to develop in accordance with their abilities and strengths, to use the freedom offered and to grow and take on responsibility, while maintaining a healthy work/life balance.

How is your company tracking with its net zero emissions by 2050 targets?

Bürkert has set the goal for itself to become carbon neutral as a global organisation by 2030 and is currently undertaking a study of the complete ecological impact of its portfolio of products, systems and services. Sustainability will become a decisive factor in developing Bürkert’s portfolio and underlying technologies.

In addition to making its own portfolio greener, Bürkert will assess opportunities to add solutions and services helping customers and partners to become more sustainable. Bürkert will develop a deep understanding of customers’ sustainability efforts and build the required competencies to develop solutions and services that help customers reduce their carbon footprint and save resources in their value creation process.

Cuong Vo, General Manager at Bürkert Australia, boasts over 20 years in process control and automation. With a background in Swisslog, Rockwell Automation and Schneider Electric, Cuong excels in sales, operational excellence and digital marketing. Specialising in guiding medium-sized organisations through transformative changes, he prioritises customer-centric approaches for sustainable growth. Passionate about industrial automation, Cuong emphasises collaborative problem-solving, leveraging competence and commitment. Joining Bürkert during a growth phase, he looks forward to contributing to the team’s momentum, sharing knowledge and accelerating market presence in Australia. Cuong’s extensive experience in the United Kingdom and Australia positions him as a key asset to Bürkert’s regional success.