Inaugural winners – innovation to underpin Hunter frigates

As a part of building Australian capability, the BAE Systems Hunter Class Frigate Program will hold periodic challenge-based innovation events to encourage technological innovations to be transformed from content to capability and realised through technology and performance, with a focus on performance improvement challenges in the shipyard.
The first BAE Systems Innovation Challenge is to investigate Track & Trace technologies in the age of Industry 4.0. It is proposed to explore and evaluate the capabilities, opportunities, and limitations of Track & Trace technologies within a test environment that replicates that of the Shipyard.
The key outcomes from this challenge are:
- Understanding how technologies used in other industries could be applied into the shipyard,
- What performance could be achieved in the shipyard, and
- Limitations of the technology in a shipyard environment.
Dematec was selected as one of four Australian companies to help BAE Systems fast-track advanced manufacturing processes, as part of the first innovation challenge to support the Hunter Class Frigate Program.
The basis of Dematec’s project is to demonstrate a track and trace process using a platform that can bring together the data from a number of sub-systems and provide relevant information to the correct people in the right location at the appropriate time – a ‘connecting platform’.