New Electrolux GM

Mr Bell is the new general manager at the Electrolux fridge factory in Orange. He has replaced Scott Ostini, who last month was appointed Electrolux's national sales manager based in Sydney.

Two weeks into his new job, Mr Bell is still finding his feet. However, he says he has been very impressed with the calibre of people at the Orange plant, which employs about 800 people.

In his previous role, Mr Bell managed the General Motors manufacturing plant in Rayong, in Thailand. The plant produced 130,000 vehicles annually and employed almost 3000 people.

The vehicles were exported to more than 170 countries, including Australia, where they are rebadged as Holdens and Izuzus.

This plant, which was built from scratch five years ago, is regarded as the world's best car making plant in terms of safety. It notched up more than 40 million man hours without a lost time injury.

Mr Bell spent 17 years with GM, starting out at the company's Holden factory in Elizabeth, South Australia.

He originally trained as an engineer with BHP at Whyalla in South Australia, then had a brief stint with Tubemakers in Adelaide before joining General Motors.

During his time with GM, he worked on a range of projects overseas, including in the United States and Indonesia before moving to Thailand in 2003.

Mr Bell said the switch from the motor vehicle to fridge manufacturing industry was not such a significant change.

"Some of the fundamentals are pretty much the same," he said. "It is the basic discipline of manufacturing ... you are not down on the shop floor telling someone how to do something, you are looking more at the system in place and how it can be improved."

He said manufacturing was diminishing in most western countries.

"That is one of the challenges for us here, to be competitive," he said.

The line that Australia could not compete with Asian countries because of low wages and poor working conditions was a myth when applied to the fridge industry, he said.

The main competitors for Electrolux were manufacturers from Korea, where wages were on a par with those in Australia, he said.

"Labor is not a defining element ... so it comes down to how efficiently we can manufacture our products," he said.

"You have to be cost competitive and make a quality product; every day you have to be getting better."

Mr Bell said one of the key roles of his position would be to "promote more team work so that we are all going down one path".

"That is my job really - how we focus on what we really need to do to make the place work."

Mr Bell said one reason he had returned to Australia was to raise his children here. He and his wife, Helen, have two young children.