AUGUST 2019 BusIness 7
Want to join the debate? Have your say online by joining the M.E.N. Media
Business Group on LinkedIn, or follow @MENBusinessdesk on TwitterBrian Holliday, managing director
Siemens Digital Industries
Manufacturing
matters... and
we need to
make smarter
T
he UK is at a critical
crossroads in terms of
politics, economics
and social justice.
If new Prime
Minister Boris Johnson
is serious about laying
foundations for Britain’s future
prosperity, manufacturing needs to be
at the heart of his thinking. We need a
commitment to invest in our regions
and bolstering our ability to design and
make the things we can trade.
Brexit throws into sharp relief the
need for a robust industrial strategy,
along-term response from government
to collaborate with business in
addressing disruptive risk and
opportunity.
The headlines highlight pressure
among the major players in our
foundation and automotive sectors, but
there is a long tail of firms that will be
affected by the decisions we make now.
We have an Industrial Strategy to
boost productivity, create good jobs
and invest in skills, industries and
infrastructure.
It emphasises sectors and advanced
technologies such as artificial
intelligence (AI) and robotics that
could be transformational. We have an
innovation focus too with investment
like the High-Value Manufacturing
Catapult.
But it’s a time of heightened
uncertainty and unprecedented
technological progress, and there’s
danger in distraction that opportunities
will be missed.
The risk is that the rest of the world
embraces the 4 th Industrial Revolution
and the UK will fail to deliver a truly
digital economy. We are witnessing a
fourth global productivity leap that will
take us far beyond the mechanisation,
electrification and automation eras of
the previous three. The next revolution
will be about digital – unprecedented
computational power, connectedness
and interaction between humans and
machines.
Jobs will change. Yet technology
adoption shows us the potential to
create more, higher-value roles if we
get it right.
The UK has been historically slow to
invest and adopt, leaving us with an
industrial skills and productivity deficit
which in turn prompted the Made
Smarter review.
It established that we lag our main
competitors for example, using just 32
industrial robots per 10,000 workers
compared to 170 in Germany.
Around the world the data show a
correlation between investment in
plant and equipment and industrial
productivity. The equation is simple:
fail to invest in factories or the training
needed for new economy jobs and
we’ll fall behind.
Manchester largely missed on the
third-industrial revolution,
manufacturing moved east as jobs
diminished and social divisions grew.
The impact on those communities
beyond the gaze of Westminster,
particularly in the north, was immense- but manufacturing didn’t die.
UK manufacturers dug deep,
regained momentum and retained
Britain’s position as a top 10 global
performer.
Manufacturing employs around
2.7m people and officially accounts for
around 10% of UK GDP.
However the Manufacturing
Technology Association argues it
actually supports 7m jobs and 23% of
the economy. Manufacturing matters.
In creating productive, regional jobs
it may be that manufacturing has
insights to offer policy makers and the
wider economy?
Siemens UK recently invested in a
new production line for industrial
motors in Congleton where we employ
450 people. We’ve embraced the ideas
of Industry 4.0 – a digitally designed
product, simulated and verified at
prototype stage – and a production
environment prototyped in a virtual
environment, with a paperless shop-
floor that enables us to build customer
orders with 17,000 potential variations
without adding to cost or shipping
time.
We’re using technology to augment
human ingenuity, teamwork and
experience to improve productivity,
competitiveness and sustainability.
The Made Smarter review found thatadoption of new technology in
manufacturing could boost output,
increase industrial productivity by
25% and create at least 175,
new jobs.
A new Prime Minister intent on
addressing the regional economic
imbalances of the past must recognise
the important role manufacturing and
Industrial Strategy have to play in our
future prosperity.
An Industrial Strategy with rocket
boosters should be the economic
policy of choice for Boris Johnson now
he has the keys to No 10.