opinion bita l The whole is greater…
…than the sum of the parts, especially in the fork lift truck industry where multiple manufacturers and suppliers must co- operate effectively to run successful businesses and meet customers’ needs. From his standpoint as Secretary General of the British Industrial Truck Association (BITA), James Clark considers how the lift truck ecosystem has changed – and keeps changing – over the years.
A
t first sight, a fork lift truck is a single entity from a sole manufacturer. Look a little closer and see an assembly of components – tyres, batteries,
attachments, fuel, electronic systems and of course financing – from many different companies.
BITA recognised this subtlety many years ago: our archives show companies such as Avon India Rubber Co Ltd. and Chloride Batteries Ltd. joining as associate members from the end of the 1950s and through the early 60s – but still the manufacturers had precedence. Today, however, the materials handling industry is recognised as a complete ecology of diverse companies.
Today, the materials handling industry is recognised as a complete ecology of diverse companies.
One of the crucial factors here is that safety and standards, of course, are addressed to the industry as a whole. There needs to be a bridge over the gap between the archipelago of cooperating companies and the continent of rules and regulations. This unifying role, we recognised in the early 1980s, falls naturally to an organisation such as BITA, leading us to create a variety of separate membership groups, all with input to the Association’s technical policy.
Bridging the gap
Today BITA has four membership groups which together provide a broad representation across the industry. Our Truck Suppliers Group has 25 members
24 ShD October 2011
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and encompasses almost all of the companies supplying industrial trucks in the UK today. Our Media Group includes 12 publications (including ShD) supporting the safe and efficient use of industrial trucks in materials handling, logistics and other related industries. And affiliate membership, currently numbering five, is open to specialist associations and bodies who support and advise the fork lift truck industry.
Our fourth group, the Components and Services Group (CSG), was officially formed in the 1990s and currently includes 42 companies ranging from the traditional tyres and batteries of the earliest component members, to fast- developing sectors such as financial services and electronics (in which membership has grown immensely over the past decade).
The importance of CSG CSG members enjoy full-voting membership and exclusive benefits such as BITA’s official sales statistics, a twice-yearly economic forecast, plus members’ discounts on IMHX participation and BITA publications. CSG members play a full part in BITA’s work: the CSG Chair has a seat on the BITA Board, and group members are represented on BITA’s Technical Policy Committee. In this way BITA maintains vital lines of communication between component suppliers, service providers, truck manufacturers and end users. CSG member businesses encompass a huge range of highly sophisticated products and services that contribute to safety, efficiency and functionality in the many specialised environments found across the materials handling
industry. In particular, recent years have seen a surge in membership from the electronics sector, with new devices crossing the boundaries between products themselves and how they are used. For example, tracking and telematics devices are improving efficiency, while personnel location devices improve safety.
This in turn reflects the way the industry is changing and developing to meet new challenges, and indeed how BITA keeps adapting its structure and strategy to reflect and represent the industry. This is an essential part of building and maintaining BITA’s industry-leading position on issues such as health and safety, standardisation, and market surveillance. Insights from all aspects of the industry also contribute to BITA’s ability to exert influence, particularly on new legislation, in the UK and
internationally, pursuing its ultimate goal of ‘lifting industry standards’. CSG members, for example, will be closely involved with our intention to play a central role in encouraging more apprentices into the material handling engineering sector.
One of the biggest challenges facing the engineering sector in general is our ageing workforce; increasingly, education and training will become more important within our industry. We already have training providers within our affiliate members, and in future this is likely to expand.
As a whole, we firmly believe, BITA is very much greater than the sum of its parts. To learn more about the CSG, or consider becoming a member, please see
http://bit.ly/rngUvW. ●
www.bita.org.uk
opinion
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