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Global views beyond our current horizons
“The south has more manufacturing companies than any other UK region. Many are smaller, specialist and niche manufacturers, but many are also leading edge and world-beaters,” said The Business Magazine publisher David Murray welcoming guests to the first Southern Manufacturing 100 dinner at Oakley Hall Hotel, near Basingstoke
Manufacturing is also intrinsic to all other business sectors, Murray added, a point highlighted by after- dinner speakers Joe Nellis, Cranfield School of Management professor of global economy, and Jim Newton, market development director of McLaren Applied Technologies.
Today’s insights on tomorrow’s world
Get ready for a far more complex and changeable business world. That was the message from Professor Nellis as he provided insights into the dynamics and drivers now increasingly influencing national economies and global markets.
“If you think it’s been tough in the past 25 years, we haven’t even started to see the impact on manufacturing of the global shift of economic and political power from west to east. Things are exploding, changing fast, but not here in the western world. The past 10 years of global change will seem like a snail’s pace compared to the next 10.”
Supporting his view, Nellis noted:
• In 2012, China was second only to the USA for global patented registrations. China hadn’t been listed before.
• By 2025, the number of university students worldwide, but mainly eastern, will double. “The talent that will hit the world has not yet begun.”
Driving the rapid global change were macroeconomic, industry and social trends such as consumer power, economic rebalancing, public sector activities, business complexity, global
alliances, growing talent pools, corporate governance, demand for resources, and accessible information from Internet and IT connectivity.
“For the first time in history, almost everybody on this planet can talk to each other today.”
Also, the businessworld beyond the horizon was being influenced by sustainability, geopolitical tensions, migration, population growth, increased urbanisation and technological advances.
Emerging ‘Frontier Economies’ are the future, not the BRIC and MINT nations, stated Nellis. Africa represents 15% of world population, but just 4% of global GDP, he exampled. In the next decade, 1.5 billion additional middle-class buyers would increase global purchasing power.
“’With the wave of people, new talent, coming up from the base of the pyramid, I am absolutely optimistic about the speed of innovation from different starting points across the globe.”
Nellis highlighted that in the late1970s the UK manufacturing sector focused on ‘more of the same’, maintaining its output, rather than capital widening and deepening through investment, innovation and increased use of technology.
Nellis posed the underlying questions: “What will companies look like in the next 10 years? Are you willing to change? Is your business ready to meet the challenges, grasp the opportunities?”
Jim Newton, market development director of McLaren Applied Technologies
Tomorrow’s technologies used in today’s world
McLaren is a name indelibly linked to motor racing, but its applied technology division is steadily spreading its innovation, engineering and manufacturing excellence beyond the automotive world.
Jim Newton revealed that McLaren Applied Technologies is now working across several sectors, designing intelligent products and processes for underground drilling rigs, hybrid power units, cycling, human surgery, and financial services that take advantage of the ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive intelligence that Professor Nellis identified, combined with data-led design, to optimise performance.
From its Woking headquarters, McLaren can monitor the performance of McLaren F1 race cars as they compete live around the world – recording 150 real- time data streams running at least 1,000 samples per second, linked to predictive analytics.
“We manufacture six race cars per year, but across the nine months of the racing seasonthat vehicle will be about 70% different. Competing in F1 means cycling our innovation in a tighter loop than the competition; battling to apply our resources to the task in the most effective fashion – the essence of business in many ways.
Joe Nellis, Cranfield School of Management professor of global economy
www.businessmag.co.uk
“Winning in F1 is not solely about having the most cash, but being the most effective – having a competitive mindset, a set of behaviours, ways of working, core technologies and deep applicable understanding of what it takes to succeed long-term.”
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MARCH 2016
The 300-strong and rapidly growing elite team of McLaren Applied Technologies is now applying itself and those values outside the world’s racing circuits.
“We work with pioneers who share our level of ambition to deliver improved performance in what they do. For us, it’s about taking the world forward.”
McLaren Applied Technologies seeks the optimisation of man and machine. “In that harmony; that alchemy between people, process, equipment and environment we will find the next step-up in performance.”
* The Southern Manufacturing 100 celebrates the top private independent manufacturing companies – a £7 billion combined turnover regional listing representing 53,500 employees.
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