British Manuafacturing
makes more sense to find a willing partner at home. And therein lays the problem, a lack of understanding and willingness amongst UK businesses and manufacturing to collaborate and partner with startups and SMEs.
Established industries are often weary of change and there is a critical need to invest in British manufacturing, both financially and in terms of skills and training, dragging infrastructure and attitudes towards startups out of the 19th century and into the 21st. Government and the dozens of quangos that promote business and industry, need to do their part to stimulate investment and simplify information provision and create continuity. Currently,
if you visit the
Business Link website, one of the first messages on manufacturing that
greets you is ‘its often cheaper to manufacture abroad’.
British manufacturers need to be incentivised to work with startups and growth businesses, not just the Rolls Royces of the world, in a spirit of collaboration and partnership, as it is often at the point between innovation and manufacturing that failings of UK SMES are exposed. And that requires a change of business culture and an understanding that the supply chain isn’t simply a collection of disparate companies operating for themselves. Business in 2012, during a lingering recession is about partnership and investing in long-term ecosystems of growth. If Chinese firms can offer preferential financial arrangements in terms of advanced payments, then British manufacturers need to match
or better those agreements. We need to demolish barriers to entry and to stop simply accepting that outsourcing manufacturing to China is a given.
2012 is a fashionable year for all things British and manufacturing should be no exception. The combination of high fuel prices, global logistical complexities, environmental impacts, increasing global labour costs and lead times should be considered alongside new government initiatives to reward and encourage regional growth and a growing global interest in British quality and heritage. These factors
should be reason enough
for SMEs to review their strategy and to strongly consider building partnerships locally to enable them to bring elements of manufacturing back to Britain.
31 entrepreneurcountry
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