manufacturing roundtable 15
What’s the training like within manufacturing?
Lane: “I think we (Xtrac) offer very good training. It’s an industry accredited award- winning three to four-year apprenticeship programme, involving every part of the company’s operations and then there is a job at the end of it. It’s not six months making the tea. We offer something sustainable with an interesting future for the individual.
“When people come into our sector they sometimes don’t have a full appreciation of what our sector is all about, how it’s changing and where it can go … and then, once in the sector they realise that manufacturing and engineering really is a stimulating and exciting place to work … then you’ve got them hooked.”
Apprentices also tended to stay with their training company longer than graduates, the Roundtable noted.
Lane added that Xtrac is an employee- owned manufacturing company. “Our people know that the benefit of what they are doing is directly impacting them as a shareholder. It’s an intangible benefit, but boy is it a benefit. You can really see it on the shopfloor, and I think that can be hugely important in forging a company that is truly joined up and congruent in its vision.”
of technology and those inventive and innovative brains that we have got, mainly through our fundamentally excellent education system. That’s the situation we have got to today.
“The more productive we become the more we move towards lower input costs and higher-value products the less that threat will be.”
Jolly mentioned ‘Industry 4.0’, the data- driven digitised vision of self-organising and automated manufacturing. “I attended a seminar recently which presented data showing that companies and countries moving towards 4.0 can gain a 20% increase in productivity and a 7% boost to employment. You put in more sensors, more automation and you get higher-level skills and jobs. But, the UK is not on the 4.0 curve yet. Only 25% of UK machines are digitally or Internet connected. There is a massive change coming.”
Sachpekidis and Reid said automation was already happening in parts of their organisations, and other members of the Roundtable agreed that ‘smarter’ manufacturing was the upcoming objective.
Lane: “Whenever you are looking to grow your business, you first try to get more from what you have got, through organisational or cultural improvements. But, there comes a point where investment is required. The confidence that is cautiously there in our economy is now coming through with 5-6% business investment growth per annum.
“We (Xtrac) are investing in machinery, we have to, to make sure that the quality we have got continues to be viewed as the best, and is the best, until we can make it better. And, we are also prepared to invest in our people too in order to get to our customer- focused objectives quicker.”
Jones: “According to The Office for National Statistics (ONS) the UK is 20% behind on productivity against its comparative G7 countries.”
Kate Arnott
Wadsworth: “If you match your talent’s individual values with the values of the company you will get a much more congruent workforce.”
Do we need to make things smarter?
Murray asked if the lack of incoming talent was a threat to the future of high-end manufacturing in the UK.
Lane felt not necessarily, because UK manufacturing always stayed ahead of the market. “Over hundreds of years, the UK economy has always gone up the value chain when its manufacturing gets threatened, predominantly by lower- cost production countries. The UK has always re-invented itself through the use
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2015
Wadsworth provided an LEP statistic that Thames Valley Berkshire was the only UK region that was more productive than any of the states in the USA.
Mark Jolly
Does manufacturing need a re-brand?
What’s the image of British manufacturing here and abroad; what did ‘Made in Britain’ mean to international partners and buyers, asked Murray?
Wadsworth first gave an insight into recent LEP research on the Thames Valley sectors that were likely to provide the strongest GVA (Gross Value Added) increases for the area: digital technologies, life sciences and healthcare, and energy and environment.
Although it sounded like scant support for the manufacturing sector both Wadsworth and Jolly pointed out that manufacturing was an integral part of each of the LEP's priority sectors.
Walker’s view was: “UKTI did a pretty good job of showcasing British business and its technologies at an event I was at in Auckland, and also within the UK at showcasing the services available to UK manufacturing businesses. UKTI put on events attended by thousands of people at a time. It was incredibly interesting to me that on the other side of the world UKTI was putting something on that was going to open up that market to UK businesses and their high-quality and innovative products.”
Jolly: “I had a similar experience in China, where UKTI was ‘putting the ‘Great’ back in Britain.’ There were multiples of hundreds of people there.”
Jones recalled an event bannered: ‘Manufacturing is more than just making things’. “I thought that was such a good point to make because it does involve technology, knowledge, skills, design – so many diverse aspects.”
Murray suggested that the increasing Stephen Lane
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