andrew leslie - ceo, a&rt
Tell us who you are.
I’m Andrew Leslie, CEO of A&RT, an Australian industrial automation company that helps manufacturers in food, packaging and broader industry actually make their operations work better, not just look good in a PowerPoint.
My background is in electronics, robotics and industrial automation, but if I’m honest, I’ve spent most of my career trying to make complicated systems look simple enough that people assume they were simple to begin with.
That’s probably my main skill, making hard things look easy. It’s a bit of a double-edged compliment. You’ll be standing there after a project works and someone will say, “Oh, that doesn’t look too hard, I could probably build that.”
Which is great… until you realise that’s only true because someone already did a fairly large amount of unglamorous work making it behave properly.
A lot of my time is spent between engineers, operators and executives translating, unblocking, and occasionally reminding all three groups that physics is not, unfortunately, optional.
What is your primary market in ANZ?
We tend to work with businesses at a point where growth starts exposing operational bottlenecks, whether that’s labour constraints, safety risks, inconsistent output, quality challenges or ageing processes that no longer scale.
Food manufacturing in particular is a fascinating space because the expectations keep rising: higher throughput, better traceability, less waste, tighter margins and greater consistency, all while maintaining quality.
What is the most significant macro-level shift or challenge currently driving customer investment?
The biggest shift really started with COVID, and it hasn’t gone away, it just evolved.
Before COVID, most manufacturers could absorb inefficiencies with labour. If something got hard, slow or inconsistent, you could usually just hire your way out of it. That stopped overnight.
COVID exposed how fragile that model actually was, not just in terms of supply chains, but in day-to-day operations: labour availability, absenteeism, shifting demand patterns, and the general reality that “normal operations” can disappear very quickly.
Since then, we’ve seen a permanent change in how businesses think. It’s less about optimisation for cost alone, and more about operational resilience, can we still run if conditions aren’t ideal, if labour is tight, or if demand moves unpredictably?
In food and manufacturing especially, the conversation has shifted from “How do we reduce cost per unit?” to “How do we make sure we can keep producing at all, consistently?”
And once that question shows up, automation stops being a nice-to-have and starts becoming part of the operating model.
How does your company help them overcome it?
We focus on solving the actual problem, not just selling equipment.
Automation is sometimes portrayed as a silver bullet, but in reality the best outcomes usually come from understanding process flow, product characteristics, maintenance realities and operational pain points.
Sometimes that means robotics. Sometimes it’s smarter controls, better material handling, machine upgrades or process redesign.
Our philosophy is to right-size the solution. Industrial automation should feel like a competitive advantage, not an expensive science experiment.
How is your company deploying or preparing for the integration of AI-driven solutions in industrial automation?
We’re excited about AI, but practical about where it creates real value.
Industrial environments demand reliability, so we’re less interested in AI for the sake of AI and more interested in applications that improve operational performance.
Areas like predictive maintenance, fault diagnostics, process optimisation, machine vision and operational decision support are especially promising.
Most factories already have enormous amounts of data. The challenge isn’t collecting more, it’s turning it into decisions that actually improve performance.
Beyond existing product roadmaps, what transformative technology or concept do you believe will have the greatest disruptive impact on the ANZ industrial sector in the next five years?
I think we’ll see a major shift toward flexible, intelligent automation.
Historically, automation worked best in highly repeatable environments with little variability. That’s changing.
Technologies like advanced vision systems, adaptive robotics and smarter software layers will allow manufacturers to handle greater product variation, shorter production runs and changing demand without massive complexity.
For food manufacturing especially, that flexibility could be transformative.
The other shift will simply be accessibility, technology that once only made sense for very large manufacturers will increasingly become viable for mid-sized businesses.
How does your company culture support innovation and adaptability in such a rapidly evolving industry?
We try to build a culture that is practical, collaborative and curious.
Industrial automation has a way of keeping everyone humble. If you think you know everything, a production line will usually correct that assumption fairly quickly.
We encourage people to challenge ideas, stay close to operational realities and make decisions with confidence, while staying adaptable enough to change direction when needed.
Some of the best ideas don’t come from boardrooms. They come from standing on a production floor hearing an operator say: “This bit drives us crazy every shift.”
What strategies have you found most effective in attracting and retaining top talent?
People want meaningful problems to solve and a sense that their work matters.
One of the advantages of industrial automation is that the outcomes are tangible. You can point to something and say, “We built that. We improved that.”
We also focus on giving people variety, ownership and opportunities to grow. Engineers, technicians and automation specialists tend to thrive when they’re learning and solving new problems.
And, importantly, we try to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy, because nobody gets into engineering dreaming about spreadsheets and approval workflows.
What's your long-term vision for the role of automation in your sector?
I see automation becoming a core capability of modern manufacturing rather than a competitive luxury.
The goal isn’t replacing people. It’s creating safer, more productive and more resilient operations.
In sectors like food manufacturing, automation will increasingly help improve consistency, quality, traceability and workplace safety while helping businesses remain globally competitive.
The best factories of the future won’t be “lights out.” They’ll be smarter environments where people and technology work better together.
As a leader in a field defined by constant technological advancement, what is the most important principle or philosophy that guides your decision-making and long-term planning?
High conviction, loosely held.
You need a clear perspective and the confidence to make decisions, but also enough humility to adjust when the facts change.
We try to stay focused on customer problems rather than becoming overly attached to particular technologies.
Because in automation, the shiny thing is not always the right thing.
