COVER STORY


Deployment of AI, VR and robotics may help reduce costs for some manufacturing engineers


DIGITAL DRIVER E


nergy and staff costs are the biggest challenges faced by UK manufacturers according to membership organisation


for manufacturing engineers Make UK. A representative from the organisation, which represents 22,500 companies, was speaking at PPMA, a recent process manufacturing trade show in Birmingham. Following energy and staff costs in


the list of biggest challenges, is the cost of technology and IT, although the Make UK spokesperson Ben Courts argued that this might be alleviated by using AI, VR and robotics.


14 www.engineerlive.com


Engineering trade body Make UK outlines the challenges and opportunities facing the UK’s manufacturing sector


In a presentation based on a survey


of members, Courts, a membership manager for the group, gave a state of the market overview of engineering companies that was rather mixed. On the upside, the sector’s scale is considerable, with UK manufacturing accounting for about £270bn of output and providing 2.6 million jobs. The sector pays average wages at about 10% higher than other sectors in the UK. In addition, 47% of the UKs R&D goes through the manufacturing sector, as does 40% of total business investment. Unfortunately, the UK’s position on the global stage has fallen from


eighth in the world to 12th in recent quarters since several other countries have recently invested heavily in engineering. For example, Russia has leapfrogged as a result of investment following the war in the Ukraine.


THE THREAT OF RISING COSTS “‘Costs costs costs’, are the biggest problem for the engineering manufacturing sector,” Courts explained. He said that reducing expenditure on energy with efficiency drives or moves to be more sustainable (if cost effective) will be


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