Meaningful internships boost Australia’s defence industry and digital future
Through our Industry Capability Development platform, DMTC proudly facilitates a number of meaningful internship opportunities. Recently, DMTC’s Smart Enough™ Factory (SEF) program has hosted several undergraduate interns, with a view to expanding this number to approximately 34 interns in Victoria alone by 2026. Even more interns are set to join the program as SEF expands from Victoria to New South Wales and other jurisdictions. One recent intern, Dylan Jarvis (an undergraduate student at Swinburne University of Technology), was kind enough to speak to DMTC about his internship experience and how DMTC’s support has impacted his career trajectory.
Dylan Jarvis – Swinburne University of Technology
As a Smart Enough™ Factory intern, Dylan assisted DMTC to boost the defence readiness of Victorian small businesses in the manufacturing sector. Over the course of his internship, Dylan took on a range of responsibilities to help facilitate the SEF program and integrate the program’s ‘Factory in a Box’ Kit into participating small businesses. ‘The multifaceted nature of the internship meant I was able to exercise a wide breadth of knowledge, from electronics to JavaScript and basic web development.’
The Smart Enough™ Factory program is boosting the defence readiness of small businesses in the manufacturing sector.
Because DMTC’s Smart Enough™ Factory program is committed to providing tailored solutions for local manufacturers, Dylan was given the autonomy to find creative ways of addressing the unique issues identified by businesses he regularly supported. ‘I had to explore and experiment with the tools at hand to find solutions that worked for each company, something that I think is particularly valuable to the kind of work I want to be involved with in the future.’
The Factory in a Box Kit, developed by DMTC with Sutton Tools, provides a practical and low-cost way for companies to learn Industry 4.0 concepts and capitalise on advances in data driven manufacturing processes. In Dylan’s words, the most powerful element of the kit is the ability to retrofit and integrate low-cost sensors ‘as a lightweight digitisation solution for modern manufacturing equipment, in addition to older machines that do not support their own data capture interface.’
Of his time as an SEF intern, Dylan admits that it provided ‘opportunities for learning above and beyond what I expected.’ Helping bridge the gap between his studies and industry knowledge, as well as allowing him to gain experience across both disciplines of his dual degree in Engineering and Computer Science, were tremendously valuable components of his placement. ‘It is really hard to find opportunities that touch on all aspects of what I’ve learnt at university,’ he says.
Dylan also commended DMTC for empowering interns with opportunities to develop their communication skills and emotional intelligence. These soft skills, Dylan suggests, are ‘an often-underrepresented skillset in most internships dedicated purely to technical experience.’
Following Dylan’s internship, he was offered a casual position to assist the Smart Enough™ Factory Project Team with developing additional training materials for the project as it continues to roll-out its digital capability uplift program in Victoria. ‘I only completed my involvement in the project recently, but already DMTC has left a big impact on the direction and goals for my future career.’
Dylan is now assisting the Smart Enough™ Factory Project Team to develop additional training materials.