From racing cars to designing auto manufacturing plants
Date posted: 19 Oct 2011
Matt Dwyer
BEng (Mechanical) 2011
Swinburne alumnus Matt Dwyer has landed a graduate engineering role in manufacturing for the Asia Pacific and Africa region at Ford Australia.
For the past seven months he has been working in the Advanced Facilities area which is responsible for the design of all new manufacturing plants in the region.
“We have just designed a new $1 billion plant in India which is beginning construction now and scheduled to build its first vehicle in early 2014,” Matt said.
“We are also designing multiple new plants in China to be built over the next five years.”
Matt’s area of design is the assembly plant where all the components are attached to the car body and the vehicle drives out complete.
“I work on the layout of the plant and all the mechanisms involved that will enable a high volume of cars to be assembled.
“For India we designed a plant that can produce over 1500 vehicles per day. This is the biggest and most state-of-the-art plant we have designed and includes new levels of automation to achieve this high volume.
“It’s an interesting role for a graduate as you have to understand every process in manufacturing a vehicle.”
Inspired by his father and grandfather who have a passion for automotive engineering, Matt said he has always been fascinated by cars.
“I raced karts as a kid which taught me a bit about motorsport. I also completely rebuilt my first car at the age of 16, as part of a project with my dad. My parents gave me the old Alfa Romeo, which wasn’t far from the scrap yard and my dad and I spent the year restoring it to original condition in time for my Ps.”
That experience was good grounding for his involvement with the Swinburne Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) team.
As part of his mechanical engineering studies at Swinburne, Matt was involved with the SAE team for two years. He was part of last year’s team that finished second in the 2010 Australian Formula SAE competition and went on to finish fourth at the Japanese Formula SAE competition in September 2011.
“We are a small team, so we have to cover many areas of design and learn how to stretch a dollar, Matt said. “This achievement shows that Team Swinburne is world class, capable of designing and building a car that can beat the best in the world.
Matt believes his involvement with the SAE program was the main contributor to his gaining a job at Ford. “It is well known within the automotive industry that the involvement you get in the Petrol SAE program at Swinburne is unlike any other university.”
Read more about Swinburne’s success at the Japanese SAE competition.
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