Project Arrow – Team Canada’s Innovation and Collaboration Win

As a team you need a game plan to move forward and win. A team of individuals playing their own game is not the recipe for success. However, when individuals work together, follow the team’s set plays, the outcome far exceeds what any individual can achieve on their own.

The automotive industry in Canada has modelled this team strategy by jumping on the opportunity to “leverage its unique assets to build a ‘mines to mobility’ ecosystem” moving Canada from player in the EV automotive manufacturing sector to leader ¹ with the Project Arrow collaboration.

The timing was perfect. The Canadian government, in an attempt to boost economic growth, looked for opportunities to invest in domestic innovative ideas and set up “The Global Innovation Clusters; “fast-paced and strong ecosystems in industries where Canada leads.” Combined with the national goal to achieve Zero-emissions by 2050 ², a series of initiatives and projects were launched to achieve this goal. One initiative to emerge was the Arrow project: A 100% Canadian automotive collaboration from innovation, design through to production and now in its launch stage.

The automotive industry seems the perfect microcosm of manufacturing in Canada. Like all other manufacturers, it faces a set of challenges new to manufacturing globally: An aging workforce, AI (Artificial Intelligence), up-skilling employees, cyber security, sustainability, and zero emission targets. ³ So, when the Ontario automotive sector, thought leaders and government came together to launch Project Arrow it was a big win for Team Canada and Canadian manufacturing that addressed the challenges in the current manufacturing climate. By forging new relationships from the ground up, the learnings from this collaboration, disruption, and investment can be realized and duplicated across the entirety of manufacturing. They are a model for the future that will have a lasting and far-reaching impact in the Canadian manufacturing sector.

Just like investment in the space industry resulted in the innovation of memory foam and anti-scratch lenses⁴ we expect to see pieces of this collaboration find their way into the average Canadian home and other manufacturing sectors’ applications, possibly with the EV battery warming technology in Project Arrow that optimizes battery performance in colder climates.

The establishment of a fully Canadian supply chain for Project Arrow cannot be underestimated as it strengthens and diversifies local supply chains for other manufacturers requiring microchips, batteries, etc. Understanding the interconnectedness of manufacturing in Canada, as players on the same Canadian manufacturing team, means that we can learn and lean into each other, borrow innovation, and build each other up. These relationships, partnerships and innovations are worthy of investment and are vital to the health of our economy and manufacturing in Canada.

Project Arrow is an incredible example of how Canadian manufacturers can work collaboratively as a team to accomplish something truly remarkable. While at the outset project Arrow may seem unique to the automotive industry, we feel it is significant to the whole of manufacturing in Canada and are excited about what it may mean for other team Canada manufacturing sectors.