Management of the technical skillset required to support automation in the sugar industry

As in many industries, the Australian sugar industry has seen change driven by advances in automation technology. The many advantages delivered by these technologies and the inevitable use across all industries are seemingly well researched and accepted. An element of the progression towards advanced automation technologies that appears to have been somewhat taken for granted, however, is the management of the technical skillset required to support them. This paper aims to highlight the challenges that have been observed in practice on this topic. By considering the context of these challenges through a high-level literature review, it has been concluded that the workforce or labour market does not seem to be naturally evolving to be one that supports the sugar industry’s continued advancement towards increased automation. Comment is made about the opportunity to strategically address these issues by further quantifying them and subsequently pro-actively acting to address them. Key words Automation, technical resource management, technical skillset, technical resource retention, sugar industry automation