Hot Topic Revelling in reshoring Challenges remain while celebrations reign
Workforce and Skills Semta spectacular A review of the SSC’s first awards ceremony A stich in time There’s a new higher apprenticeship scheme for fashion and textiles
Manufacturing Leadership Leaders unite! Take ownership of Industry 4.0 in the UK Meet the Mittelstand Lessons from Germany’s pedigree mid-sized firms
Manufacturing Technologies Fit for purpose Looming transformations in the textiles sector
IT in Manufacturing Solid experience 3D experience dominates SolidWorks World
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
Green manufacturing The Big Bang Fair Automation case studies Workforce Management Systems
In partnership with:
Can a renaissance in UK textiles manufacturing be sustained?
INTERVIEW Rick Mejia MD, Milliken Europe
www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Vol 17 Issue 2
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Welcome
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
I
t’s no surprise to see that trade body EEF’s pre-Budget messages to government have raised energy costs and security of supply head and shoulders above other challenges facing industrial competitiveness in the UK (bit.ly/EEFpre-Budget).
31
48
49
But it has become abundantly clear that while government rhetoric may commit to supporting business, and more recently manufacturing in particular, when it comes to environmental and energy policy, it is entirely ruled by thoughts of the ballot box. Thus, while government puts pressure on the big energy companies to find ways of freezing or reducing consumer energy bills, it does little to push for innovation in commercial energy pricing and prioritises domestic over industrial supply. Last month I heard that a key heavy industrial manufacturer in the Sheffield region had been told point blank by its supplier that they should expect around 30 energy blackouts over the winter while limited energy supply is directed to local homes, rather than into its business. It wasn’t told when these blackouts could be expected – just expected to deal with it. Such an attitude is irrational and its impact on manufacturing investment in the UK could be devastating – not only in terms of companies failing or upping sticks to cheaper locations, but also through the loss of potential foreign direct investment.
HOT TOP IC
Revelling Challeng in reshoring celebrat es remain while ions reign
WORKF AND SKIORCE LLS
Semta spec tacular A review of the SSC’ awards ceremon s first A stich y in There’s time a apprenti new higher ceship sche fashion me for and texti les
MANUFAC LEADER TURING SHIP
Leaders unite! Take own in the UK ership of Industry 4.0 Meet the Lessons Mittelstand from Germ pedigree mid-size any’s d firms
Of course, engineers and manufacturers themselves have the opportunity to be part of the solution to our energy conundrum – which no one pretends it will be easy to solve.
MANUFAC TECHNOLOTURING GIES
Fit for purp Looming ose the texti transformations les sect in or
IT IN MA Solid exp NUFACTUR ING 3D expe erience
rience dom SolidWork s World inates
ALSO IN THIS ISS UE Green man ufacturin The Big g Ban Automat g Fair ion Workforce case studies Systems Managemen t
In partners hip with:
What potential is there for a renaissance in British textiles INTERVIEW manufacturing? Find out on p31.
Industry has been warning government for far too long that energy policy which forces Britain to step leagues ahead of other nations in taxing carbon emissions will only have a detrimental effect on the UK’s attractiveness as a place to invest. Meanwhile, it fails to create any overall benefit for the global environment (p16).
Can a re naissanc e in UK manufa textiles be sustacturing ined?
Rick Meji a MD, Millik en Euro pe
www.the manufac turer.com |
March 2014 |
It was great to see sector skills council Semta invest 24 year old Sam Etherington as the first contemporary engineer to join its Hall of Fame at its first Skills Awards (p49).
The young innovator is responsible for creating a multi-axis wave energy converter which has been hailed as a revolutionary renewable energy source. With energy so key to the future of manufacturing, not just in the UK but around the globe, it is important that the sector applauds the contribution of peers working to find solutions to security and supply challenges – it will be interesting to see which engineers top the list of candidates for the second Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, for which nominations opened this month (bit.ly/QEPrizeopens). It’s good to observe the growth of large scale, high profile manufacturing awards schemes. While we are reaching a stage where there is an argument for consolidation in some quarters, there can never be too much recognition and celebration of British industrial achievement and contributions to society. Signalling a big step up in ambition, this month marked the opening of its own annual awards scheme with an official launch event for the first time. The VIP event in the House of Commons marked the start of the 2014 campaign to identify The Manufacturer of the Year and follows from a record breaking attendance of over 800 people at the 2013 awards ceremony. See coverage of our awards launch online.
Jane Gray Editor
Vol 17 Issu e2
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 1
Editorial Advisory Board
The Editorial Advisory Board Next generation guidance for ’s editorial advisory board provides insight into the real concerns and interests of manufacturing leaders. The board guides the editorial team in developing relevant, accessible and useful content which can help British industry keep competitive. With the challenges posed by skills gaps and talent retention a key obstacle before this ambition, decided that the board should include direct input from the next generation of industry leaders. Our next generation board members are:
Anna Schlautmann, 21: 3rd Year Logistics Apprentice, MBDA In addition to her apprenticeship, Anna is also studying for a Business Management BA (hons) part-time. She enjoys applying the knowledge gained in her studies to the work environment and is a keen advocate of apprenticeships in local schools and colleges – including those where she used to be a student. Anna believes her hard work in reaching out with careers advice and experience to young people was the main factor which led to her being named ’s Apprentice of the Year 2013. “I am greatly interested in the future of MBDA and I am interested in ensuring that the next generation of manufacturers have the right skill set and knowledge,” she says.
Deirdre Fox Director of Strategic Business Development, Tata Steel
Hywel Jarman Director of External Affairs, EEF
Tony Hague MD Power Panels Electrical Systems and Chairman of the Midlands Assembly Network
Richard Lloyd Global Manufacturing Director, Accolade Wines
Andrew Churchill Managing Director, JJ Churchill
Ben Taylor Assistant CEO, Renishaw Plc
Simon Edmonds Director, the Catapults Programme
Andrew Peters Division Director, Drive Technologies, Siemens
Steve Evans Director of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability
Pamela Petty Managing Director, Ebac Group
Ross Meikle Quality Improvement Manager, Hayward Tyler Ross laid claim to ’s Young Manufacturer of the Year Award in 2013, when he was a continuous improvement engineer at Hayward Tyler, thanks to his enthusiasm for his job and his willingness to learn. “I think my keenness to take anything head on and with a winning attitude made an impression on the judges,” he says. Ross is now building his expertise in hunting out manufacturing and business improvements and recently achieved his ambition to lead positive change in the business with his promotion to the position of quality improvement manager. His long term ambition is to become managing director of a manufacturing firm. Anna and Ross will join the board for one year, at which point the 2014 winners of the Apprentice of the Year and Young Manufacturer of the Year Awards will take the places.
2 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
Philip Greenish CBE CEO, the Royal Academy of Engineering
To find out more about our Editorial Advisory Board and the work they do to improve The Manufacturer magazine’s offering to its readers, go to: www.themanufacturer.com
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Callum Bentley Deputy Editor Callum joins The Manufacturer after spending the past three years working as a print and online news journalist for a major regional news organisation in Australia. With a strong background in news for the web, Callum is responsible for boosting and updating The Manufacturer’s online presence, while also contributing to and assisting with the production of the monthly print magazine. c.bentley@sayonemedia.com
Jon Tudor Head of Events Jon is an experienced events & training manager. He previously worked for the Manufacturing Advisory Service, learndirect and was responsible for launching the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence in the UK. Jon joined SayOne Media in 2010 and is the company’s lean champion. He leads programmes for Lean Management Journal as well as developing ’s events and is also chair of the World Class Manufacturing category within ’s awards programme. j.tudor@sayonemedia.com
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In order to receive your monthly copy of kindly email g.gilling@ sayonemedia.com, telephone 0207 401 6033 or write to the address below. Neither The Manufacturer or SayOne Media can accept responsibilty for omissions or errors. Terms and Conditions Please note that points of view expressed in articles by contributing writers and in advertisements included in this journal do not necessarily represent those of the publishers. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in the journal, no legal responsibility will be accepted by the publishers for loss arising from use of information published. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the publishers.
EEF is dedicated to the future of manufacturing. Everything we do is designed to help modern manufacturing businesses evolve, innovate and compete in a fast-changing world. www.eef.org.uk
The Manufacturer is working collaboratively to drive innovation and manufacturing excellence in the UK. Our partnerships with leading industrial research centres, further education providers and trade bodies is an important part of this and is distributed directly to the alumni and membership of the following organisations:
Cranfield University EEF Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge
March 2014
CONTENTS
08 News and regular columns
Manufacturing Technologies
A summary of manufacturing news and events with commentary on industrial research and policy 18 Naked Engineer Our Naked Engineer shows the value of who you know and knowing they know nothing 22 Lean on me How much tech is too much tech when trying to put lean into practice? Lean Management Journal editor Victoria Fitzgerald discusses 24 Out & About goes to Bühler Sotex, PTC in France and gets updates on the unmanned aircraft system Taranis 26 Best of Online What you wanted to read about most on ’s website in February 28 Hot Topic: Reshoring How much weight should be placed in the recent optimism about reshoring manufacturing back to the UK? investigates 31 A Patch on its potential explores the UK’s textile manufacturing sector to see if it really is patching together the tapestry of its true potential 34 Interview Rick Mejia, MD of Milliken Europe, talks to Jane Gray about growth opportunities and challenges for technical textiles and deciding on manufacturing as a career industry 38 60 second interview: Dr Adrian Hirst of the British Occupational Hygiene Society talks about attitudes towards managing worker health in industry
52 Achtung Bitte: The smart factory is coming, but what will the future factory look like? 54 Fit for purpose: Callum Bentley explores two new textile technologies breaking new ground in 3D printing and intelligent materials 56-61 Case studies and insight from the Automation Advisory Board
Pillar features Workforce & Skills 45 Employee of the month: Diana Mae Worrall, footwear apprentice, Dr Martens 46 A stitch in time: To complement this month’s textiles sector focus takes a look at the newly launched Higher Apprenticeship in Fashion and Textiles framework
Manufacturing Leadership 50 Leaders Unite!: Jane Gray reports on a talk by German industrialist Professor Henning Kagermann on the origins and structure of Industry 4.0 51 Meet the Mittelstand: What can British SMEs learn from the mighty German Mittelstand? investigates
6 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
IT in Manufacturing 63 Ansys ups the ante: James Pozzi gives an overview of the 15.0 update from simulation company Ansys 68 Solid Experience: Tim Brown reports on developments in 3D experience from SolidWorks Wold in San Diego, California Other topics in this section: Workforce Management Solutions, CRM and simulation software 72 Last Word: Jane Gray welcomes a Growth SIGnal for the UK aerospace supply chain
NEWS
www.themanufacturer.com/news
Workforce and skills
Siemens and Trafford College teamed up to tackle the North West’s engineering skills shortage. Under the scheme students from the region will train at the new Centre for Science and Technology, equipped with a Siemens lab containing equipment designed to help young people learn about factory automation. Trafford College has invested £15M in the Centre for Science and Technology. The partnership is part of Siemens’ successful bid for Employer Ownership of Skills scheme funding, which aims to help employers train young people while encouraging further education.
Exports
The vast majority of manufacturing businesses in the UK have never traded overseas, despite manufacturing exports bringing over £24bn to the UK economy, according to a new survey. In the same week where a joint British Chamber of Commerce and DHL Express study showed export confidence at a record high, the findings from currency exchange business Caxton FX found a culture of caution over sending goods abroad still exists. The survey which questioned 1000 SMEs in total, found only 7% of manufacturing businesses questioned had exported. When asked why, more than 27% said the greatest obstacle faced was identifying local contacts, while a third (36%) referenced a lack of knowledge about trading overseas, a figure repeated in those wanting to avoid the perceived mountain of red tape.
8 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
Siemens and Trafford College have teamed up to battle the skills shortage in the North West. Read more about educating future engineers on p49.
Automotive
Woking and Tokyo based Akebono Brake Industry elevated its alliance with McLaren Mercedes to Technology Partner for the 2014 Formula 1 season. The partnership will see Akebono designing and integrating a new braking system to align with the latest changes in Formula 1 regulations. Akebono engineers and specialists have created an electronic brake-by-wire rear brake control system. The new F1 regulations mean the rate at which cars can harvest energy under braking has increased by five times as much from 400 to 2,000 kj per lap. The brake-bywire technology will aid the braking effort at the rear, negating the need for the driver to constantly alter the brake bias and also preventing rear lock-up.
Contract wins
Rolls-Royce agreed to a $1bn (£604m) deal with Lockheed Martin to deliver 600 engines for the C-130J Super Hercules military transport aircraft. The British engine maker confirmed the agreement ensures its AE 2100 as the engine of choice for all variants of the C-130J for the next 11 years, and servicing the US government until 2018. Rolls-Royce also confirmed it will deliver more than 1,500 of the AE 2100 engines to Lockhead Martin’s Georgia factory in the US, with manufacturing set to take place at another site in Indianapolis.
ENERGY
Plans were submitted to a create a tidal lagoon power station in the Severn Estuary that could provide for 10% of the UK’s electricity demands. The £850m venture will see the construction of a six-mile, u-shaped seawall with underwater turbines that will harness incoming and outgoing tides from Swansea docks to the new Fabian Way campus at Swansea University. The tidal lagoon would comprise an impounding seawall capable of containing 11 square kms of seawater. The project is set to create 1,850 construction jobs, as well as 60 operational jobs and 90 vacancies linked to visitor spending. Tidal Lagoon Power, the company behind the operation, expects the lagoon to become a major tourist attraction, with an offshore visitor centre, a road for pedestrians, cyclists and electric buses, and triathlon and water sports facilities within the wall.
MANUFACTURING NEWS
Workforce and skills
Jaguar Land Rover began recruiting for 500 new jobs at its Solihull manufacturing facility as part of a 1,700 jobs recruitment drive. The plans, announced last September, will see the first intake consist of semi-skilled production operator jobs to support the production of new vehicles, included as part of the £1.5bn invested to expand the site. The recruitment of the new jobs will be conducted in three phases to support future growth and investment plans on site, with the next two to open later this year and in early 2015, taking the site’s headcount to almost 8,000. Promising indicators showed that engineering image issues are being addressed. A BIScommissioned survey has found that the number of 11-14 year olds thinking about working in engineering has jumped by six per cent. Significantly, the survey showed a six per cent rise in the number of girls saying they would consider an engineering career at a time when the issue of gender balance in industry is being hotly debated. More parents (a rise of four per cent) also said they would encourage their children to become engineers.
INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH
The University of Nottingham was awarded half a million pounds of funding for a project exploring how light can be used in innovative new manufacturing technologies. The money, awarded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), will support two 18-month studies. One will develop holographic optical tweezers for tissue engineering technologies and the other will hope to transform the production of chemicals in the manufacture of drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. Chemists and engineers at the University have been awarded £300,000 to transform a technique called continuous photochemistry, while an additional £250,000 has been set aside for using laser light for regenerative medicine applications.
Read more about advances in 3D printing on display at the recent SolidWorks Conference in San Diego on P70
Manufacturing technology
In its latest research into the 3D technology market, Allied Market Research revealed the 3D industry was valued at $46 billion in 2013 and is estimated to reach $175.1 billion by the end of 2020, growing at a CAGR of 21% during 2013-2020. The report divided the sector into three parts: products (3D printing, 3D glasses, 3D cameras, 3D displays); applications (3D printing industry, entertainment, healthcare, government and defense, aerospace, industrial and manufacturing, and architecture); and software (3D scanning, 3D modeling, 3D rendering, 3D animation, 3D reconstruction). North America was the largest geographical segment for the 3D technology market in 2013, accounting for about 40.9% of revenues. Entertainment remains the largest application segment, while 3D printing application is expected to exhibit the fastest growth during the forecast period.
Company results
The future of the Manchester textile manufacturer which produces the Kinky Knickers range is secure after a management buyout. The 79-year-old Headen and Quarmby firm, which went into administration last month citing ”a small number of bad debts” further compounded by a lack of orders, is now under the ownership of former managing director David Moor. Headen and Quarmby UK also confirmed it intends to re-start production at the company’s Middleton facility as soon as possible. Mr Moor said: “We have a strong underlying business and a full order book. We’re determined to rebuild a great British success story, thanks to the support of our staff, retailers, suppliers and Mary Portas.”
COMPANY INVESTMENT
TMAT, a multi-national manufacturer of acoustic components for tractors and excavators invested £25,000 in a new acoustic testing facility in Chesterfield. The new soundproof chamber is an upgrade to the firm’s existing acoustics laboratory and will allow TMAT to compare the different materials it develops to reduce noise and vibrations in vehicle cabins more scientifically. TMAT MD Jason Lippitt said: “This new lab will allow us to better monitor and further increase the quality of the unique acoustic products we engineer and manufacture with our customers.” TMAT customers include Case New Holland Tractors, JCB, and Volvo. March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 9
NEWS www.themanufacturer.com/news
ENERGY
BAE Systems recorded a 3% increase in earnings in 2013 to a total of £1.9bn.
Company results
Aerospace and defence manufacturing company BAE Systems has reported a solid 2013 financial result but has warned it is expecting a drop in profits as pressure on US government spending continues. The company recorded a 3% increase in earnings before interest, tax, and amortisation (EBITA) to £1.9bn and underlying earnings increased by 9% to £0.42 per share. BAE Systems only recently finally settled the pricing of a deal to sell 72 Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia, which was originally agreed in 2007. The conclusion to the negotiations mean the deal was included in the 2013 full-year results. According to Reuters, with the Salam deal price finalised, BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia are likely to commence discussions on a second batch of Eurofighter aircraft, which could see the Saudi Air Force order a further 48 to 72 planes.
Company closures
Over 200 jobs are under threat following news that US-owned gas supply fittings manufacturer Crane Building Services & Utilities plans to close its St Helens site. The business, which supplies gas distribution fittings, pipeline equipment and valves, said it plans to move its manufacturing operation elsewhere by March 2015, but wasn’t specific on the planned new location. In a statement, the company said: “Consultation with the 216-strong workforce has commenced and the company proposals, which include redundancy, will be discussed over forthcoming weeks. The St Helens site is an ageing facility with significant investment required to operate efficiently and to bring it up to world class manufacturing standards.”
10 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
AWARDS
Semta, the manufacturing sector skills council, held its first national awards ceremony at a glamorous gala dinner in London. The event was officially opened by Business Secretary Vince Cable. Companies which received accolades at this inaugural awards ceremony included Berthon Boats, Pentaxia, Babcock International and Toyota Motor Manufacturing. Individual awards for young talent went to Jade Aspinall and Daniella Di Stazio at MBDA and David Cross at Rolls-Royce. Read more about the awards on p49.
As British power prices continue to surge, manufacturers must look to new ways of managing how they use what power they have in the most cost effective manner. According to a joint survey released recently by manufacturing organisation EEF and energy supplier npower, Britain’s manufacturers are increasing their investment in strategic energy management and efficiency, in order to improve their competitive position against a backdrop of rising energy costs. The survey voices the concerns of manufacturers and recognises that investment in energy management is not without significant barriers, including the perception of extensive payback periods and businesses prioritising other investments. Key findings One third of CEOs and Managing Directors have taken control of energy efficiency decisions Once turnover exceeds £20 million, manufacturers start turning to specialist energy buyers or managers One in five manufacturers are looking to suppliers for advice on energy savings and efficiency 96% of companies surveyed quoted reduction in energy bills as a reason for implementing energy management Almost two thirds of manufacturing companies cite reducing their carbon footprint as the reason for implementing or considering energy efficiency measures
How can you deal with the skills shortage? How can you improve quality? How can you grow your business? How can you increase your company’s competitiveness? How can you give your staff greater job satisfaction? How can you decrease wastage in production?
The Manufacturer magazine in conjunction with the leading automation equipment suppliers has established The Automation Advisory Board to educate ownermanagers and factory directors about what automation equipment can do and the benefits it can bring to UK manufacturers.
where the capital equipment could make a profound difference to winning contracts. Companies in non-auto sectors, who are unfamiliar with the range, capability and simplicity of automation kit, need and deserve to know what automation options are available.
Automation needs to rise to the board level in companies of all sizes, but especially larger SMEs
In 2013 it is a business risk not to be informed about the benefits this technology can bring.
Automation is not the question, it is the answer! For more information contact Henry Anson, Managing Director, The Manufacturer E: h.anson@sayonemedia.com T: +44 (0)20 7401 6033 The Automation Advisory Board is proudly supported by: ABB, BARA, Festo, Gambica, Innomech, Kuka, Lombard, Manufacturing Technology Centre, Omron, Rockwell, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Staubli
Automation can provide the answer to all these questions and many more‌ For more information please visit: www.themanufacturer.com/ automation-advisory-board/
NEWS www.themanufacturer.com/news
Company results Co-owner John Russell, along with business partner Bill Brainbridge, has seen the fortunes of The Three Tuns change dramatically over the last decade, with the Shropshire brewery set to break the £1m sales barrier for the first time.
England’s oldest brewery is set to smash the £1m sales barrier for the first time in its history, just a decade after two ale lovers prevented its potential closure. The Three Tuns Brewery, based in the Midlands town of Bishops Castle, Shropshire, has seen the growing
popularity of real ale result in additional demand for its products since fears of closure in 2004. Business partners Bill Bainbridge and John Russell stepped in after the brewery faced being sold and made into a block of flats. With over 500 pubs now selling its casked conditioned ales, the company has
Contract wins
Train manufacturer Hitachi Rail Europe awarded the flooring contract for its Intercity Express Programme to Cornwall-based Treadmaster Flooring. As reported in the Northern Echo, Tiflex subsiduary Treadmaster Flooring, will lay rubber carpet underlays on Hitachi’s new Intercity Express Programme East Coast and Great Western Main Line Class 800 series trains. Jamie Foster, Hitachi’s procurement director, said: “Safety is absolutely central to everything we do and any products, parts or companies we use to provide safety elements need to demonstrate that they can meet the highest possible standards. Tiflex have a lot of experience in this area including in supplying the flooring for a number of London Underground projects.” The re-emergence of the UK car industry as a global leader is helping a Black Country manufacturer target the fastest growth in its nine year-history. Cab Automotive, which produces a range of interior components including seats, arm rests, parcel trays and dashboard consoles, has secured £7m of new contracts to supply parts for the new BMW Mini and the seat foams for the Renault van. These latest successes will help the firm push turnover towards the £40m level and increase the workforce by 30%. It marks an exciting twelve months for the company which has seen it work with the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) to develop new opportunities and, importantly, buy its 200,000 sq ft factory in Tipton.
12 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
set its sights on the next stage of its expansion on building its presence within the Black Country and Staffordshire. “Three Tuns is one of England’s best kept secrets, so we knew we had to step in to save it and all those years of history,” said Bainbridge.
Company announcements
One of Wrexham’s leading automotive suppliers changed its name in order to tap into demand for lightweight ‘eco’ parts across a range of global markets. Cobra Automotive Engineering will now be known as Applied Component Technology (ACT), as part of its desire to secure up to £3m of new contracts in automotive, aerospace and new generation low carbon vehicles. A new corporate identity has been developed and a website launched following a communications exercise that involved all major customers and suppliers.
MANUFACTURING NEWS
Company closures
The UK piano making industry was once a proud part of the manufacturing industry with more than 300 companies crafting the instruments. However one of the last British piano makers is about to play its swan song. Kemble London will close its Milton Keynes operations after majority shareholder, Yamaha, decided it was no longer financially viable to support the company. Kemble pianos will still be found on the market however, with Yamaha agreeing to continue to make the instruments from its factories in other parts of the world. The closure will force the redundancies of 90 employees at the factory near Milton Keynes.
Energy
Sheffield Forgemasters has passed its final audit towards ASME NPT status to become one of the few UK companies able to fabricate safety critical cast components within nuclear power stations. As a result of the audit, Sheffield Forgemasters (SFIL) will await an accreditation certificate which signals the green light to take on a new strand of civil nuclear manufacture, complementing its status as an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) certified Nuclear Materials Organisation. SFIL’s NPT status will enable the company to weld-fabricate the components it currently supplies as a Nuclear Materials Organisation – a part of the nuclear assembly process that few organisations can undertake and one with significant challenges posed by weld-joining different materials.
CORRECTION would like to correct a reference to NatWest as headline sponsor of the EEF National Manufacturing Conference in the February issue of the magazine.
Dates for your diary March The Manufacturing Health and Safety Conference 2014
18
takes place at Birmingham’s Thinktank Science Museum. The conference will allow delegates to learn the approaches and techniques employed by businesses from different manufacturing industries. Presentations from companies such as Mars, Jaguar Land Rover and Premier Foods will discuss methods in an industry accounting for one in five workplace accidents. www.rospa.com/events/manufacturing
24-26
The Birmingham NEC plays host to Foodex. This exhibition is targeted at the food processing, packaging and logistics industries. Updates on the latest legislative requirements add to the offering of product displays and networking opportunities. www.foodex.co.uk
April
2-3
Mid-Tech Innovation Expo, the UK’s only dedicated medical device manufacturing trade show, comes to Coventry’s Ricoh Arena. The event meets demand for a specialist, focused event in an industry unique in its research, design and manufacturing. www.mtiexpo-uk.com
7-11
MACH 2014, the exhibition for manufacturing technologies and machine tools, takes place at the Birmingham NEC. The biennial event expects to attract more than 20,000 visitors and 500 exhibitors. In 2014, MACH will include a dedicated 3D printing zone for the first time as well as its established skills zone. www.machexhibition.com
8-10
Alongside MACH the NEC will also house the Drives & Controls Exhibition, Air-Tech, Fluid Power & Systems Exhibition, Plant & Asset Management 2014, European Offshore & Energy 2014 and National Electronics Week. The following link will give access to information on all these events: www.airtech-expo.com
23-24
The Engineering Simulation Show, bringing together the world’s leading simulation software companies, consultancies and engineering companies, takes place at Derby’s Roundhouse. The show brings together a host of industry exhibitors and software providers, along with structural engineers across a wide range of disciplines and industrial sectors sharing an interest in engineering simulation software. www.theengineeringsimulationshow.co.uk
May
14-15
Asset financier Lombard is the headline sponsor while NatWest is the export session sponsor.
MEDTEC UK takes place in London. This exhibition for medical device manufacturers includes access to a conference and UKTI business exchange hub to help manufacturers in the sector make the most of their export opportunities. www.medtecukshow.com
would also like to highlight Canon’s contribution as technology partner to the conference and the EEF Photography Awards.
The National Manufacturing Debate is hosted by Cranfield University, with this year’s theme being ‘manufacturing productivity.’ bit.ly/CranfieldNMD2014
20-21
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 13
UPCOMING EVENTS
20/03/2014
Factory Tour: Winners - The Manufacturer of the Year 2013 20th March 2014, GE Aviation, Wales
GE Aviation Wales was crowned The Manufacturer of the Year 2013 after beating over 150 entrants, winning the People & Skills and overall Manufacturer of the Year awards. This is
an unique one-day event covering best practice and a site tour and was regarded by the judges as ‘...the unsung hero of British manufacturing.’
www.themanufacturer.com/ge-factory-tour
29/04/2014
Health & Safety Future Factory Series event
29/04/2014
Supply Chain Future Factory Series event
06/05/2014
ERP Connect
FREE to attend for subscribers of The Manufacturer
29th April 2014 - Ambassador’s Bloomsbury, London
This conference is an expansion on health and safety recognition. It gives an opportunity to explore how you can change your thought process of health and safety and expand on your compliance to improve drive bottom line
profitability to protect your business reputation and how you can change that. The conference will show attendees why health and safety should sit within the board room and should be part of strategy.
www.themanufacturer.com/healthandsafety2014
FREE to attend for subscribers of The Manufacturer
29th April 2014 - Ambassador’s Bloomsbury, London
Transparency, visibility, social corporate responsibility- these are all buzz words when we talk about supply chain. This conference will look at how we can implement a clear tier system to avoid disasters like the fall of the
Bangladesh factory to the horse meat scandal to the current recall of Aston Martin car; giving you the knowledge to implement a high functioning, lean and CSR compliant supply chain.
www.themanufacturer.com/supplychain2014
6th May 2014, The Waldorf Hilton Hotel, London
The Manufacturer’s ERP Connect has changed the way UK manufacturers approach software selection by minimising the overall time and effort involved in qualifying potential Enterprise Software vendors. ERP Connect is the must attend event if you are looking to install or
upgrade your ERP system in the next 12-18 months. This unique event offers a one-of-akind opportunity for you and your team to see the best in Enterprise Software Solutions in the world, all in one place, all at the same time!
www.erpconnect.co.uk
Social Media and LinkedIn for Manufacturers
Birmingham – 27th March, London - 24th April, Manchester – 15th May, Birmingham – 16th June, London – 10th July
Social media is absolutely everywhere and you have probably wondered what it means for your company and how you can effectively utilise it to grow your manufacturing business. Correct use of social media will provide you with an
www.themanufacturer.com/social-media 14 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
improved channel to target potential customers and strategic influencers. Fact: manufacturing companies can reap the same benefits of social media just as any other company.
Register your interest now
The Manufacturer of the Year Awards 2014 were launched at the House of Commons on Monday 3rd March and kindly sponsored by Margot James MP.
I’m excited. It’s a testament to my team. Hard work, dedication, they know what we need to do. I’m proud of the accomplishment and of what they’ve done
Entries into this year’s awards will be accepted from Thursday 20th March. Brand new categories for 2014 will also be announced on this date.
Managing Director, GE Aviation Wales Winner 2013
These awards are an opportunity to showcase your achievements and earn industry-wide recognition for you, your people and your business. Register your interest today and be the first to receive this year’s complete entry information and a reminder once the awards open – don’t miss your chance to apply!
Award categories include: Innovation and Design Leadership and Strategy Apprentice of the Year World Class Manufacturing People and Skills Sustainable Manufacturing To register your interest, simply email us your details and we’ll remind you when it’s time to enter.
Contact Laura Williams on: l.williams@sayonemedia.com Corporate sponsor:
Category sponsors: Industry Forum
Business Excellence Through Inspired People
POLICY POINT & BACK TO SCUOLER
Policy Point. Sahar Danesh, principal policy advisor for manufacturing, Institution of Engineering and Technology highlights the Trailbrazers programme to redesign apprenticeship frameworks.
W
e have seen welcome growth and investment in apprenticeships in the past few years and the resurgence appears to be continuing, with recently published figures from the National Apprenticeship Service revealing a 15% increase in apprenticeship vacancies in engineering and manufacturing posted online between August and October 2013 compared to the same period the previous year. Maintaining the quality of apprenticeships is a concern for employers however. So it’s reassuring to see that government has plans to monitor and update apprenticeship framework standards. These plans are detailed in the publication The Future of Apprenticeships in England. The government’s Trailblazers scheme aims to give employers the opportunity to lead the development of new apprenticeship standards and the high level assessment approaches that sit alongside them. It is important that these schemes are overseen by independent professional bodies like the IET, which can ensure that achieving an apprenticeship truly signifies that an individual has achieved a level of competence that merits a nationally recognised standard such as Engineering Technician or ICT Technician registration with the Engineering Council. For the Electro-technical Trailblazer, the IET has provided guidance on the length of apprenticeships and what specific knowledge and skills apprentices need to gain during the training programme. While setting up the Electro-technical Trailblazer scheme, employers and organisations were asked for their views. SME organisations and IET members used the opportunity to raise their concerns on apprenticeship standards and highlight issues that prevent SMEs from participating. Through the Trailblazer scheme, employers have a high degree of freedom to develop standards and assessment approaches which reflect their needs – and to shape an industry standard that defines what an apprenticeship means. As well as taking a lead role within the Electro-technical Trailblazer, the IET is part of the aerospace, energy & utilities and food & drink manufacturing Trailblazers programmes. The government’s aim is for apprentices to start on the new frameworks by January 2015.
16 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
Back to scuoler.
P
EEF’s chief executive Terry Scouler observes a time of opportunity for UK energy policy.
olicy discussions, proposals and stakeholder engagement on issues of climate, environment and energy are notoriously difficult. Significant announcements and conclusions emanating from tortured negotiations are generally rare beasts – it is significant therefore, that recent months have seen a splurge of climate related commitments and guidance. November saw the international community agree to provide details of emission reduction targets by early 2015. December saw the publication of Climate Change Committee advice on the Fourth Carbon Budget and 2014 has started with a bang with the European Commission’s proposals for a framework on climate and energy policy between 2020 and 2030. Arguably, the most important aspect of these announcements was a shift in the language that surrounds them from aggressive target setting to balanced consideration of the costs of meeting such targets and their long term impact on productivity, competitiveness and carbon leakage. This change in rhetoric can only be viewed as a good thing. However, there is still plenty in the proposals to be concerned about. Our view is that the UK’s current emissions reduction ambition is out of line with our competitors. Government needs to make good its 2011 commitment to review UK targets and ensure we are aligned with our European negotiating partners. Furthermore, it remains to be seen how renewables and energy efficiency targets will be practically translated into member state commitments in the long term. We hope the UK continues to resist any moves to reduce its flexibility to decide its own energy mix and route to EU emissions reductions. In the run-up to Ban-Ki Moons September 2014 summit in New York we expect to see increasing tussles among EU member states over the agreed commitments and targets for renewables across the community. It will certainly be a key part of debate at the Spring meeting of European Leaders on March 20-21. The European Commission now has the opportunity to develop the view that reducing the EU’s competitiveness on the global stage doesn’t equate to lower global emissions. It simply means that emissions will be moved to countries without such targets and the European manufacturing industry will suffer. The Commission must use this new focus to press ahead with meaningful and urgent action on a wide range of issues including a reform of the EU emissions trading scheme.
APPOINTMENTS
Paul Hetherington
Marshall-Tufflex
Marshall-Tufflex appointed Paul Hetherington as its new CEO, replacing Jim Fletcher, who is stepping down after 30 years at the helm. Hetherington, formerly managing director of Alumasc Rainwater, Drainage, Casings & Plastics Division, will work with his
David Ruminski
in the production and supply of building products having worked for well-recognised manufacturers and merchants/distributors during his career. “I am sure he will prove a superb asset to Marshall-Tufflex and build on the great work done by Jim.”
experience and expertise in driving operational process, productivity, efficiency and bottom-line improvements at multinational manufacturing organisations. TMAT managing director Jason Lippitt said Ruminski was handpicked for the role.
“He is highly accomplished in strengthening competitive advantage by reducing costs of products and processes, and those are just the kinds of traits we need in a plant manager as we look to push for our aim of £20m turnover,” he said.
Gerald Eve, where he was instrumental in the £37m sale of Princes Exchange, the largest single office investment sale in Leeds last year. Rupert Visick, managing partner at Gent Visick, said: “Garry is a stellar signing for Gent Visick and is a like-
minded individual who brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to our growing team. “There is undoubtedly renewed optimism and confidence in the market and the increased levels of activity show no signs of slowing down.”
TMAT
TMAT appointed David Ruminski to the newly created role of plant manager as it looks to improve manufacturing output and achieve its target of £20m turnover. Previously head of operations for Ohly in China, Ruminski has considerable
Garry Howes
predecessor up until his retirement in May. With a background of working in a number of sales and executive roles, Hetherington will remain a non-executive director of the Builders Merchant Federation. Chairman Kevin Page said: “Paul brings with him a vast amount of experience
Gent Visick
Industrial property specialist Gent Visick appointed investment expert Garry Howes to further broaden its investment offering into areas including offices and retail. Mr Howes joins the Leeds-based firm following nine years as head of investment in the North of England for Gino De Jaegher, The Real Good Food Company The Real Good Food Company appointed Gino De Jaegher as its new chief operating officer. De Jaegher, was managing director of British Sugar for five years, before leaving in 2012 to take up a consultancy role at RGFC. In his new role De Jaegher, who has previously worked at Procter and Gamble, will
take responsibility for the day-to-day running of the company. Pieter Totte, RGFC executive chairman, said: “His appointment to this role will enable me to concentrate on the strategy and, specifically, the commercial development of the group overall, and I feel confident that we now have a structure in place which will enable us to develop our businesses to achieve our growth targets.”
Mark Anderson, Fascia Graphics Fascia Graphics, the UK’s leading provider of graphic overlays and membrane keypads, appointed Mark Anderson as sales manager for the Midlands, North Wales, North West and East Anglia regions. Anderson, who previously worked for the company between 1996 and 2010, goes into the newly created position with the aim of increasing the reach of its UK sales force following a recent
£1m investment in new production equipment. Paul Bennett, managing director of Fascia Graphics said: “We’re delighted that Mark has returned to Fascia Graphics as he was highly influential in taking the company to its market leading position.” “When he first joined Fascia in 1996, he rapidly increased his area sales from £100,000 to £800,000 – so we’re looking forward to benefiting from his expertise in building relationships and always delivering on the Fascia promise.”
To notify The Manufacturer of your company’s appointments, please contact James Pozzi at: j.pozzi@sayonemedia.com or: 0207 401 6033
David Lockwood, Knowledge Transfer Network David Lockwood was appointed as non-executive chair of Knowledge Transfer Network. The network, a new vehicle taking effect from April 1, will further develop the work currently undertaken by the Technology Strategy Board’s Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTN’s). The new organisation will continue to support business innovation, bringing UK innovators together from across business and academia to collaborate, share knowledge and ideas and develop business partnerships that drive economic growth. CEO of the Technology Strategy Board, Iain Gray said: “David’s experience with innovationfocussed businesses will prove invaluable in improving and expanding both the network and collaboration between cutting edge businesses.” “He joins us at a pivotal time in the development of the KTN, as it transitions to a more fluid structure.”
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 17
NAKED ENGINEER
Naked engineer Welsh resourcefulness
Our Naked Engineer shows the value of who you know and knowing they know nothing.
D
ave the Donkey (Ops Director) wandered in just as I was considering whether 3.30pm would technically be a late finish at Hemlock Towers or an early start at Cavendishes. I felt the need to celebrate after landing four tickets to the Wales-England six nations punch-up – would have preferred England-Scotland but beggars can’t be choosers.
Apart from the fact they want nearly 15 grand for changing our permit – that’s more than a new one costs – I’ve spent the best part of three days filling in the sodding application with them and now they’ve rejected it because it’s the wrong class of permit!
18 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
“Bit of a dog’s dinner on the light metals front,” reported Dave. “You know that lightweight alloy, Permabend, that the warlocks and witches at Hemlock’s LMD conjured up in Llangrafffchrnard for vehicle roll-cages? Well we need to change the radioactive sources in the densitometers so we need to upgrade the source permit. “Problem is the eejits at the Environment Agency and their new bunch of incompetent, bean counting Welsh compadres at Natural Resources Wales couldn’t do the proverbial with a dustbin full of alcohol.” “Oi, I heard that,” said Jimmy the Greek (FD) pretending to be narked by an aspersion on the accounting race and the overall aptitude of his nation. He turned on a pin outside my office door and hurried to join in a healthy slagging session. The new alloy was actually a big improvement on the old one, which was so heavy as soon as you fitted the cage to a vehicle it was pretty much guaranteed to be needed. “We’ve been messing around for weeks between the idiots and backwards bean counters and getting nowhere. Now we have six new sources arriving in ten days.” complained Dave. “Apart from the fact they want nearly 15 grand for changing our permit – that’s more than a new one costs – I’ve spent the best part of three days filling in the sodding application with them and now they’ve rejected it because it’s the wrong class of permit!”
“You should’ve told me earlier,” said Jimmy with one of his sly smiles which means you just know he’s going to pull a stunt. “I used to go to school with the new boss at NRW and with some indsider knowledge I can tell you they haven’t got the technical ability to licence a one man grass cutting operation let alone something which’ll have us all glowing in the dark quicker than you can say Cherby…..Chernly….bugger it, Six Mile Island.” Jimmy’s usually indefatigable patriotism had turned tail and legged it in the face of the mind-boggling incompetence of Welsh devolution. With this glowing recommendation of his erstwhile school pal still hanging in the air the Greek reached for the phone. I got only the next few words of his conversation with the man in question – buried somewhere in the storm-battered principality of Bore da Dafydd. I was then forced to flee for cover from the rapid fire of consonants and phlegm. A few minutes later he came off the blower. “Sorted,” he said, grinning like a manic street preacher. “We’ll have our new permit by next Tuesday. Only downside is – you know those four tickets for the WalesEngland match?...” “You didn’t?!! I yelled lurching across my desk to throttle the life out of the traitorous little bastard. But he was too quick for me – this time. Any similarity of characters to persons living or dead is completely intentional.
What’s your relationship with ERP?
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It’s Inspiring In a Relationship It’s Complicated
ERP should inspire your business, not complicate it. Update your status. Epicor ERP is built to bring out the best in you and your business. www.epicor.com/uk/compatibility
Questions? Contact us at: Phone 01344 468 468 E-mail ukmarketing@epicor.com Copyright © 2014. Epicor Software Corporation. Epicor, the Epicor logo, and Business Inspired are registered trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation.
Letters to the editor
Production lines
Letters to the Editor Terry Scuoler, CEO, EEF
In a public speech last month the Prime Minister set out the many positive economic and political reasons why Scotland should remain part of the United Kingdom. He was right to do so. Born Glaswegian, I personally understand the emotional drivers behind the idea of an independent Scotland. However, I think the longstanding economic and cultural ties with the UK represent a far stronger gravitational force in favour of the union. Many businesses are now setting out their concerns, putting their heads above the parapet and saying why they are opposed to an independent Scotland. Many others are telling me privately that they are against any suggestion of Scotland ejecting itself from the UK.
The enemy of investment and stability in business is uncertainty. While the economic risks around independence are not fully quantified, they do represent a significant gamble The enemy of investment and stability in business is uncertainty. While the economic risks around independence are not fully quantified, they do represent a significant gamble. The debate on Scotland’s future echoes some of the issues the UK now faces in the debate over membership of the EU. It is essential that we remain a part of the EU, influencing from within, and discussing how we improve that relationship. Equally, it is essential for the UK to remain as one as a nation, while benefitting from the richness and strength of the diverse nations within the kingdom. I personally think both sides would be the poorer in every respect if Scottish people choose independence.
20 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
Philip Law, director general designate, British Plastics Federation
On February 19 an article was published in The Guardian which claimed “Chemicals leaching into food from packaging raise safety concerns.” The Guardian article followed a familiar pattern. It cited a paper from a learned journal warning of long term damage of exposure to synthetics and urging further research. It was an alarmist piece and once again the views on the industry were not solicited. A host of chemicals were conveniently swept up under the generic label of ‘synthetics’ with no consideration for their very different, individual profiles. Strangely, no reference was made to the news that the European Commission had recently completed a review of two phthalates and concluded that they posed no risk to consumers. It is surely significant that we are unaware of any specific case of a human being’s health being impaired by exposure to chemicals from plastics used in any application, let alone packaging. Plastics used in food packaging are subject to a whole battery of EU and national regulations. On top of this, monitoring is carried out by the European Food Safety Authority and the UK Food Standards Agency. Developments in plastic packaging and indeed other forms of packaging have been responsible for vast improvements in the food hygiene over the last 50 years. We are at a far cry from the days when flies had to be swatted away from exposed butter packs in corner shops. The plastics used in the packaging of food are often the same as those used in healthcare applications, including body parts which are in intimate and long-term contact with body tissues. Not only is plastics packaging safe, public health benefits significantly from it.
SEND YOUR LETTER Letters to the editor from manufacturing professionals and stakeholders in the industry are welcome. Please send them to j.gray@sayonemedia.com
We are supporting the future of manufacturing with £1 billion of new lending At RBS, we understand that a strong economy is built on investing in the future. That is why, as part of our ongoing commitment to the manufacturing sector, we are supporting manufacturers by making a £1 billion Manufacturing Fund available to invest in technology, innovation, working capital and business acquisition to fund growth. We can help companies invest through both fixed and variable rate loans as detailed below: The fixed interest rates are 3.00% for 3 years and 3.80% for 5 years. The overall cost comparison for the fixed rate option is 3.20% APR for 3 years and 4.00% APR for 5 years. The variable interest rates are 2.00% plus 3 month LIBOR for 3 years and 2.25% plus 3 month LIBOR for 5 years. The overall cost comparison for the variable rate option is 2.70% APR for 3 years and 2.90% APR for 5 years. 0.5% arrangement fees shall apply for any loan option. This release is available for drawing between 02 January 2014 and 30 April 2014. Manufacturers should apply for this release no later than 16 April 2014. Funds will be available on a first come first served basis.
To find out how RBS can help your business grow, contact your Relationship Director or visit www.rbs.co.uk/supportingukbusiness Available to UK manufacturing companies with turnover of £25m and above. For details of our support to smaller manufacturers, please contact your local Relationship Manager. Early repayment charges may apply to the fixed rate option. Two years interest-only and thereafter loans are to be repaid in accordance with a schedule agreed at the outset. Any amount outstanding at the end of the term will need to be refinanced. £1 billion represents the total fund being made available across the RBS Group, across all releases. Security may be required. ANY PROPERTY USED AS SECURITY, WHICH MAY INCLUDE YOUR HOME, MAY BE REPOSSESSED IF YOU DO NOT KEEP UP REPAYMENTS ON A MORTGAGE OR OTHER DEBT SECURED ON IT.
LEAN ON ME
Lean on me
What was in the next issue? Mary Poppendieck examines lean vs agile and how the pair can work in tandem to add value and reduce costs. LMJ catches up with internationally-recognized leader in the field of Lean Healthcare, Mark Graban, to discuss the role of technology in lean. We welcome new board member Paul Hardiman from Industry Forum.
22 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
I
Victoria Fitzgerald, editor of Lean Management Journal primes debate over the role of technology in supporting lean thinking.
n this age of information we have developed a ravenous appetite for cramming new technology into every aspect of our professional and personal lives. This appetite is satiated by a market saturated with glimmering new technologies that offer potential answers to our every whim. As Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, so aptly puts it “getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” With this wealth of information how can we even begin to separate the wheat from the chaff? April’s issue of LMJ examines exactly how much technology is needed within lean. The topic generates fierce debate, with many lean traditionalists maintaining that drives toward new technologies often eclipse simple visual shop floor strategies and therefore should play a minimal role in lean initiatives. However, a growing number of organisations and lean visionaries argue that there is a place for IT in developing lean approaches. Furthermore, it is increasingly clear that there is a place for lean in developing approaches to software design. In April, Mary Poppendieck, author of the award-winning 2003 book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, will discuss developments in ‘agile’ the software world’s methodology for efficient and effective product design. Revisiting a contentious battleground Ms Poppendieck will compare agile with lean kaizen tools and assess whether the two ideas can work collaboratively. We will catch up with Mark Graban, expert in the field of lean healthcare and
prolific lean blogger, to quiz him on the role of technology in lean implementations and how social media is changing the relationship between industries and their customers. What implications do these changes have for lean thinkers?
Technology should not be regarded as an enemy of ‘purist’ lean Mitch Kapor Founder, Lotus Development Corporation
Back on the shop floor, scope for the application of technology to support lean principles can depend on a number of factors, including layout, materials flow, products and demand, to name a few. Although some may believe little tech is required at the coal face where these variables hit home there can be little doubt that building a foundation of electronic data about responses to then can be invaluable in any bid to evaluate, develop and improve processes. Bill Gates once said that: “technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important”. April’s LMJ will reveal how technology should not be regarded as an enemy of “purist” lean, but instead a valuable ally that when utilised in the right way, by the right people, can support organisations in achieving and sustaining the core objectives of lean: the elimation of waste and the addition of value.
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’s editorial team is out and about at a wide variety of industry conferences, debates and factory tours month in, month out. Let’s get a snapshot of the most interesting trips in February.
Continuous improvement is the name of the game at Bühler’s east London site
Onsite with Bühler James Pozzi toured Bühler Sortex’s East London facility as part of Onsite Insights’ company visit programme, which opens doors for peers in industry.
F
amily-owned Bühler, the global manufacturer of processing machinery used in the food industry, has long maintained a presence in London’s East End through its optical sorting subsidiary Bühler Sortex. The company has occupied its site in Gallions Reach since 2007 after its old factory in Pudding Mill Lane was sacrificed to make way for the Olympic stadium. In those seven years, turnover has risen
24 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
consistently, and continued demand for the company’s equipment should result in another strong year in 2014. Onsite Insights, a company specialising in manufacturing site visits, gave visitors a chance to see how Bühler Sortex strives for continuous improvement. The guest list was eclectic; with visitors from Mars, BAE Systems and Fujifilm to name a few. This provided an illustration of the level of interest, with the purpose, as one visitor aptly put it, on “stealing with pride.” A series of presentations from Bühler staff were followed by EEF regional director Jim Davison. As guest speaker, Mr Davison spoke of the diverse manufacturing output of the region – often underestimated against the humming backdrop of the City – and the importance of ideas sharing. After lunch, visitors were given a tour of the shop floor and got up close and personal with processes and techniques.
While technology vendors love to sell visions of paperless factories, Bühler Sortex has staunchly held on to traditional visual aids to illustrate all stages of machine production right up to packing. Bühler is a strong advocate of lean manufacturing but would not count itself as an expert with a box ticked or a journey completed. Continuous improvement is the name of the game and lean is still bringing constant and tangible changes to the factory years after it was first experimented with. One visitor on our tour remarked how much the production space had shrunk in the 18 months since their last visit, resulting in greater efficiency and freeing up capacity. Stuart Wood of Oxford Instruments, a regular user of the Onsite Insights programme, said: “One of the principle tasks for today’s manufacturer is continuous improvement, and one of the best ways to experience first-hand the practical application of the tools and techniques that will help drive a business’s continuous improvement initiatives is the first class programme of visits offered by Onsite Insights.”
OUT AND ABOUT
A life of service
Jane Gray dragged herself to the French Riviera to hear more about the growth of servitization in manufacturing and PTC’s evolving technologies to support it.
A
mixed bag of delegates including PTC customers and prospects, service providers and customers, technology experts and press gathered in Nice last month to thrash out their concerns and ambitions with regards to servitization. Representatives from BAE Systems, Thales, Dell, KLM and Renault were among them. Although the event was designed to showcase the advancing capability of PTC’s Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) solutions – launched in 2012 – debate and questions at this event tended to focus less on the technology and more on the strategic motivations and change management requirements of becoming ‘servitized’. As Tim Baines of Aston University explained over coffee, this kind of investigation is quite new – although servitization itself is not. The term was coined in the US in 1998 but has only recently begun to be bandied about in UK industry circles to describe the transition of traditional manufacturers from product-driven business models to service-based ones like Rolls-Royce’s ‘power by the hour’ brainwave. It’s important now for manufacturers to understand how to go about servitization methodically explained Baines. This is because, while the first wave of servitized pioneers developed their business models organically in response to customer demands, today manufacturers can be more proactive and competitive in pushing out service contracts to customers. PTC is excited about servitization as a concept and keen to define clear leadership in providing the technology to enable it. Since its launch less than two years ago, PTC’s SLM division has become the fastest growing business unit within the software giant and Lee Smith, executive vice president for the young division, is optimistic that acquisitions, like ServLogistics 18 months ago and ThinWorx this year will make this a sustainable reality. FURTHER READING: Read more about the presentations and debate at PTC’s SLM Executive Exchange at http://bit.ly/1eNyn6O
Flight of the Taranis
I
Victoria Fitzgerald took off to see how the unmanned aircraft system Taranis faired during its maiden flight.
n the halls of the Royal Academy of Engineering, representatives from BAE Systems, the Ministry of Defence, Rolls-Royce, the systems division of GE Aviation and QinetiQ gathered to reveal how unmanned combat aircraft system (UCAS) Taranis “surpassed all expectations” during its first flight trials on August 10 last year – information that has been classified until recently. Named after the Celtic god of thunder, Taranis is hailed by military chiefs as the most advanced aircraft built by British engineers. Its 15-minute maiden voyage into the air included a “perfect take-off, rotation, climb-out, and landing” according to those involved. Several more flights then took place last year, varying in speed, duration and altitude. To date, the stealth drone demonstrator has cost £185 million and is the result of one-and-a-half-million man hours of work by UK scientists, aerodynamicists and systems engineers from 250 UK companies. The aircraft has been designed to undertake sustained surveillance, mark targets, gather intelligence, deter adversaries and perform air strikes in hostile territories under the remote control of a human operator. Philip Dunne, Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology spoke at the RAEng event. “Taranis is providing vital insights that will help shape the future capabilities for our armed forces in coming decades,” he said. “Its advanced technology is testament to the UK’s world leading engineering skills that keep Britain at the cutting edge of defence.” The Taranis demonstrator was formally unveiled in July 2010, with initial ground testing beginning at BAE System’s military aircraft factory in Warton, Lancashire. Since 2010, various pre-first-flight milestones have passed including unmanned pilot training, radar cross section measurements and ground station system integration. The UK is now looking to collaborate with France in an attempt to share development costs of its Remotely Piloted Air Systems (RPAS). China and the US are among other countries that are creating similar technology. Nigel Whitehead, group managing director of BAE Systems added: “The first flight of Taranis represents a major landmark for UK aviation. The demonstrator is the most advanced air system ever conceived, designed and built in the UK. “It truly represents an evolution of everything that has come before it. The milestone confirms the UK’s leading position as a centre for engineering excellence and innovation.” He said he hoped the Taranis project would “attract new talent” and “inspire future generations” to the industry. Watch the footage of Taranis’ maiden flight at bit.ly/1dg3cPN March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 25
Best of Times they are a changing http://www.themanufacturer.com
H
aving performed outstandingly in the latter part of January, ’s news story on the launch of Caterham’s Formula 1 car continued to top the charts for ’s online content in February. Victoria Fitzgerald’s review of a Royal Academy of Engineering event to celebrate a successful maiden flight of Taranis, the unmanned aerial aircraft built by BAE Systems, was also a strong contender for reader attention, but you can read more about this on p25. Let’s take a look at other popular content in February.
Our tw your f eets, avour A sele ites ction @TheM of the mos anu
t factu rer in -favourited Semta Febru tweet ary s from secto skills spec tacle. r skills Semta cerem counc , ony # il TMNe , held its fir the manuf a ws bit s .ly/1c t national cturing The 3D 57t7X award m a rket is s on ye e a on 3D r to 2020 to xpected g ro printin $ g etc? 175bn. Are w over 22% y .. y . b it .l Chec y/MN ou up to sp ear k out 0 e o ed iP the fir Taran st is Taran unmanne flight foota isfligh d aer ial ve ge and pic t hicle. #mea of the BCC r n bit.l eport y/ high: s The n hows expo ew re conju r t c o sea nfid nction with... rch, carrie ence hit r e d bit.ly/ 1iNIQ out by the cord yu BCC in To kee p up w ith ne ’s ed and a itorial team ws and ob ttend serva as th @cal_ in t bentle dustry eve ey tour UK ions from ma y and n @jegp ts follow: @ nufacture janefa rs ozzi gray,
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A blog from ’s in-house F1 enthusiast and newly appointed general manager David Farrow proved a hit many times over with readers.
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avid’s blog explains why 2014 will go down in history as a season of change for the Formula 1 industry. “Teams and drivers alike will have to adapt to a multitude of technical regulations induced to lower costs and to make the sport more of a spectacle,” he wrote. “Engineers, technicians and aerodynamists have been working tirelessly for nearly a year to create new cars, predominately in the UK, to win races and show off great British innovation.” For those unfamiliar with the updates to F1 requirements in 2014, teams have had to face up to new regulations regarding engines, gearboxes, front and rear wings, fuel efficiencies and a new lower nose. “For the first time since 1988 turbo charged
engines will return to the grid,” explained Mr Farrow. “Gone are the 2.4-litre normally-aspirated V8 engines and in will come 1.6-litre V6 turbo engines, revving to a maximum of 15,000rpm. To save costs these new power packs will have to last 2,500miles before being replaced compared with 1,200 miles of the current engines.” David also notes the exit of Cosworth from the grid, leaving just three engine manufacturers in contention - Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault. Read David’s blog in full at bit.ly/ F1Timesachanging
Nissan’s new black cabs
The attraction of automotive launch stories continued with news of Nissan’s new balck cab-making joint venture in Coventry.
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he Japanese manufacturer is behind the design of the new taxi which will be assembled at a purpose built site by ADV Engineering. Other elements of manufacturing will take place at Nissan’s plant in Barcelona, Spain. £6m has been poured into the venture we reported, and new jobs are expected to be created as a result. Brendan O’Toole, CEO of ADV Manufacturing LTD, said in The Coventry Telegraph:
“This is great news for ADV and indeed for the city of Coventry. “With Coventry University turning out world class engineers and the city itself being steeped in a rich automotive manufacturing history, we couldn’t be located in a better place to launch such an exciting and prestigious project as the New Taxi for London.” See the news story in full at bit.ly/NissanBlackCab
Tracking your top reads on www.themanufacturer.com last month
The Aston Martin issue In January an opinion piece from Achilles CEO Adrian Chamberlain which made predictions for supply chain trends in 2014 was a popular read.
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n February, interest in supply chain strategy and operations endured with two articles in particular receiving a high number of hits. The first was a reaction to the Aston Martin supply chain scandal which broke on Feb 6 when the BBC revealed the luxury car maker had recalled thousands of vehicles after concerns were raised about the use of a counterfeit Chinese part in the models. (Read the news story at bit.ly/AstonMartincouterfeit) In an op ed for Antony Bourne, global industry director for ERP vendor IFS pondered what this development will mean for Aston Martin’s supply chain. “It will be interesting to see how Aston Martin’s supply chain copes in the coming weeks, following news that they are to recall 18,000 cars after discovering a Chinese supplier has been using counterfeit parts for the past six years,” wrote Mr Bourne. “While Aston Martin can’t match the scale of Toyota’s issues, it’s actually a problem that affects 75% of the cars they’ve manufactured since 2008, so is understandably very concerning for the company. It will put Aston Martin’s global supply chain under great pressure, and they’ll no doubt be keen to avoid significant disruption to day-today business,” he continued. However, as Bourne explained this may be easier said than done, since with the adoption of lean manufacturing principles and reduced inventory he felt that suppliers might struggle to supply the stock of replacement parts required. Inevitably, Bourne came round to the argument that technology to support rigorous planning, visibility of stock and materials and rapid response would be
It will be interesting to see how Aston Martin’s supply chain copes in the coming weeks, following news that they are to recall 18,000 cars after discovering a Chinese supplier has been using counterfeit parts for the past six years essential in supporting an agile reaction to the Aston Martin quandary. Furthermore, Bourne pointed out how modern ERP systems can offer an important means of preventing such disruptions occurring. “With the advancements in technologies like ERP applications to manage supply chains and quality control, there’s no room for excuses and claims that these incidents are inevitable,” he summed up. “There is a wide range of analysis and quality control tools available to ensure proper procedures are adhered to, to avoid these costly recalls. However, the significant number of recalls in recent years suggests that these systems are not in place or are not operating at an optimal level.” Read Bourne’s contribution in full at bit.ly/WhatnowAstonMartin Note that IFS is a sponsor of ’s ERP Connect event, taking place on May 6 in London. More details available at www.erpconnect.co.uk
Best of Online
Supply chain tips Our second high scoring supply chain piece in February came from Boris Felgendreher, marketing manager Europe at supply chain specialist GT Nexus.
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hunning the conventional ‘top ten tips’, Mr Felgendreher provided 11 gems of wisdom on what supply chain professionals should be considering in 2014. Briefly, these include: 1. Networked companies come out ahead 2. Siloed companies are falling behind 3. Responsibility – Traceability 4. Sustainability 5. Acceleration 6. Digitization of the Supply Chain 7. Big Data 8. Disruptions in the Supply Chain 9. Supply Chain Gains Prominence at the C-Level 10. Companies Move Beyond ERP and Portals to Work with Trading Partners 11. Interest Rate Volatility Will Send “Shocks” Throughout Global Trade For more detail on what these trends mean for manufacturers read Felgendreher’s article in full at bit.ly/ Supplychainpredictions2014.
Save the date for ’s Future Factory: Supply Chain conference on April 29. More detail at www. themanufacturer.com/ eventsite/supplychain2014
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 27
Revelling in reshoring Is it an optimistic daydream to believe that the UK can really turn the tide of offshoring and tempt companies to bring manufacturing back on a large scale? investigates.
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nterest in instances of reshoring escalated in 2013 with several surveys and reports seeking to prove that we can now talk about a strategic trend in industry, rather than a collection of disparate anecdotes. In 2014, the issue of reshoring has quickly become dominant in the national and industry press. David Cameron’s announcement of ReshoreUK helped to put the topic in the headlines, but just how easy will it be to persuade more firms to move significant amounts of manufacturing away from locations where they have existing investments, to the UK with its array of skills gaps and common reluctance in the SME base to make capital investment? EEF’s report, Backing Britain – A manufacturing base for the future, was launched on March 3 and supports a focus on
reshoring at the trade body’s National Manufacturing Conference. The report was researched and compiled in partnership with legal firm Squire Sanders. It seeks to clearly define the financial, legal and practical issues that businesses identify as challenges to reshoring so that they can be methodically overcome. Commenting on the survey’s findings Rob Elvin, a partner in Squire Sanders’ global manufacturing industry group, says: “Products of quality, high levels of customer service and brand reputation are key to the success of so many UK companies and this EEF survey underscores how important those factors are in giving UK manufacturers a competitive edge in a global market. “Moving any manufacturing across borders is a significant decision for management,” Mr Elvin continues. “But, as this report indicates, for those UK manufacturers that judge it right for their businesses, the reshoring of production can bring a number of benefits.”
Real life reshoring talks to three firms with real reshoring experience: Vent Axia Vent Axia, which makes fans and ventilation systems, reshored production of its domestic fan products in January 2013. The firm made the headlines in January this year when David Cameron visited its Crawley factory to celebrate a successful year of production the same day that he delivered his speech at Davos which launched ReshoreUK (bit.ly/DavidatDavos).
Knowledge is power and UK manufacturers can only ‘re-shore’ suppliers if they understand who is in their supply chain now, and implement a coordinated system to register, benchmark, audit and select potential suppliers in a consistent way Adrian Chambers, CEO, Achilles
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Remembering the decision making process which led to reshoring Paul Davies, group operations director at Volution, Vent-Axia’s parent company tells : “The idea to bring this manufacturing back from China originated in the General Management Forum and developed due to many drivers. “Firstly, we could see that the costs of manufacturing in China were increasing and we knew that we had to maintain leadership in service, which can prove tricky when shipping product from the other side of the World. We needed to be able to control stock to meet demands. “In addition, we had just developed a new high performance chassis for our fans and were keen to return the manufacturing to the UK so that we could improve our products.
Reshoring
HOT TOPIC
Rustins/Ho rnby
Prime Minister David Cameron Visits Vent-Axia © PA Images
“Lastly, I came into the role as group operations director and a group perspective facilitated the reshoring.” Commenting on the most challenging aspect of the move, Davies says: “Balancing stock was the hardest part. We needed enough stock from China in the UK to ensure we did not run out of products. However, once the new improved products were being manufactured the old stock would be obsolete. It was a tricky balancing act.” For detail on the benefits Vent Axia has experienced from reshoring production, including a £250,000 reduction to working capital, see an interview with Paul Davies at bit.ly/VentAxiareshoring
In 2011 Ru st London w ins, an SME paint m o a Hornby to n a contract with to nufacturer in north m y hobbyists ake the small pots manufacturer to Airfix plan decorate miniatu of paint used by re es which H ornby also s and models like owns. Hornby ha d responsive become dissatisfie manufactuness and quality of d with the th an intensiverer of its Humbrol p e Chinese aint brand tendering thanks to and after p ro cess its its proven expertise in paint Rustins won out formulatio capability n and – Humbro in filling sm l 50ml pot si decorative paints c all pots of paint ome in 14 zes. ml and Rustins ha d new filling to invest “hundred s in order to line and specialist lid of thousands” in a to the SME’ fulfil Hornby’s expec fitting equipment market resps MD Edward Krawitt tations according both Rustin onse to the reshorin. However, a strong s and Horn g by he assu has paid off for res. Furthermo re, the inve trickle dow stment pro specialist n benefits to UK ind cess created u lid-fitting ki Dewsbury t was purc stry since the -b h machine ased Mount Packa ased from builder. ging, a Brit ish Winning th e Hornby jobs at Ru contract sa st while prec ins – around seven ved and created is in total – a confirmed e figures were not nd a Hombro p that millions of pots vailable, it was aint are so o f U K -mad significan tly to the fir ld every year contrib e ms £7m a nnual reve uting nues.
Eaton Hydraulics At Eaton Hydraulics, the glo pumps, valves and motors bal manufacturer of , localisation from its custom growing pressure for of global manufacturing er base sparked a review strategy. Tyrone White, Eaton’s UK ma manager, says the British nufacturing business is doing well out of the rethink. Global approval has bee n machining work to the UK given to relocate from China to reduce overall costs and access better skills.
This is already proving to be the case with plans to launch a new global pro duct – an electro-hydraulic valve – from the UK recent ly being confirmed. White says he expects to see this year thanks to reshorin around 5% job growth g initiatives and explains that the challenge in cre atin stories is to “justify the upf g more such success ron offering a lower overall cos t investment required by t. investment in automation.” Much if this is down to
There is also a $2m investm bring assembly work ba ent being made to ck additional work will be wirt from Mexico. “This h around $1m extra sales for the UK business and will put us on a better footing to justify even mo re future investments in the UK,” says Mr White.
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 29
Reshoring
Since the MAS barometer in November last year showed increasing SME reshoring activity we have seen reshoring on a much larger scale Stephen Barr, MAS
Elvin says that the reshoring phenomenon is not unique to the UK but something Squire Sanders has seen in other jurisdictions where localisation of globalised production has become attractive. Comparing the challenges that UK companies have in developing a reshoring business case to those foreign examples however, Elvin says: “In the UK, the focus is clearly on a number of specific issues: energy costs, workplace regulation and costs, the complexity of tax and hurdles in the planning process.” Supply chain risk management firm Achilles would add that supply chain visibility is a big hurdle for potential reshorers. Adrian Chambers, Achilles CEO says: “Knowledge is power and UK manufacturers can only reshore suppliers if they understand who is in their supply chain now, and implement a coordinated system to register, benchmark, audit and select potential suppliers in a consistent way.” His comments come on the back of research, conducted by Achilles and independent consultancy IFF, which shows that less than half of UK manufacturers have engaged in supply chain mapping exercises. The research also highlights that 67% of UK
manufacturers are not confident of the quality and health and safety rigour at tier 2 and below in their supply chains which including a hefty number of foreign firms – overseas suppliers account for 40% of the UK manufacturing supply chain according to Achilles. Achilles recommends that companies invest in more sophisticated supply chain management systems having found that 58% of firms surveyed still used paper based management. For EEF and Squire Sanders the trick to increasing reshoring feasibility is in the hands of policy makers. “What we can take away from this is a need to support all businesses,” sums up Elvin. “By reducing unnecessary and complex regulation, whether in the area of tax, pensions, employment law and immigration, property development and infrastructure investment. Ultimately businesses will succeed where there are incentives to innovate and grow locally and where there is access to a flexible and skilled labour market.”
ReshoreUK
However, while policy makers hash out a tax and regulatory framework which matches government rhetoric in supporting reshoring, a new body ReshoreUK, has started work on the
HOT TOPIC
ground to help match-make potential reshorers with local suppliers and assist in finding suitable locations for reshored factories. ReshoreUK is a collaborative enterprise run by UKTI and the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS). “Essentially it’s a referrals agency,” explains Stephen Barr, head of MAS and with special responsibility for the establishment of ReshoreUK. “Since the MAS barometer in November last year showed increasing SME reshoring activity we have seen reshoring on a much larger scale and increasingly with larger companies,” continues Mr Barr. (Read about the results of the November 2013 MAS Barometer at bit.ly/MASReshoring) The time was therefore ripe for the launch of ReshoreUK which brings stronger collaboration between the work that UKTI has traditionally done with larger firms and the SME focus of MAS says Barr. MAS consultants will now work closely with UKTI “to see what hot opportunities they have in the list of large UK companies that they account manage. We’ll also be identifying a short list of foreign direct investors who might have operations they could bring back here. “Because MAS is so well connected with the UK supply base we can now help to put them in touch with the right kind of people.” Barr sums up. ReshoreUK has been put to work quickly. Almost in sync with its launch, luxury car manufacturer Aston Martin announced that quality issues will see it reshore parts of its supply chain and MAS will help find the suppliers it needs in the UK. Other enquires from SMEs seeking new contract opportunities, or looking to reshore their own supply chain and manufacturing are also coming thick and fast says Barr. FURTHER READING:
In the UK, the focus is clearly on a number of specific issues: energy costs, workplace regulations and cost, the complexity of tax and hurdles in the planning process Rob Elvin, Partner, Squire Sanders
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To hear more about ReshoreUK’s activities attend ’s Future Factory: Supply Chain conference on April 29 in London where Stephen Barr will present. Achilles will chair a session on supply chain visibility and risk at this conference which is free for subscribers to attend. Find out more at www.themanufacturer.com/ eventsite/supplychain2014.
Textiles
SECTOR FOCUS
A patch on its potential Opportunity knocks for UK textiles manufacturing but is it ready to seize the moment? investigates.
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n its heyday the UK textiles sector employed some 800,000 people making cloth and tailoring garments for customers around the world. But over the past 30 years that number has declined to around 180,000 – and before anyone optimistically speculates about the impact of technology, the slump has not been due to heavy investment in automation. The great offshoring spree for textile manufacturing came in the 1990s in conjunction with the sudden rise of value retail names on the high street. Consumer demand for disposable fashion rather than long term investment in garments put price and volume pressure onto manufacturers which was difficult to bear. Production went east with retailers specifically seeking big savings around the CMT (cut make trim) element of manufacturing according to John Miln, CEO at the UK Fashion and Textile Association. “Largely speaking the great offshore took place in the 90s as retailers saw the opportunity to gain a much greater margin through outsourcing the supply chain,” he explains. “It proved successful because Chinese companies, and firms in other developing economies, were able to absorb the existing technology, accept help in developing it and create a vertical sourcing base where yarn processing, dying, weaving and knitting, together with the garment manufacture, was able to take place in one broad locality.”
Avoiding becoming gloomy about this relentless march of progress however, Mr Miln goes on to explain why it has not been all bad for UK textiles companies. “Companies at the high value, prestige brand end have retained their position in the UK and I would suggest that indeed these companies – making sought after fabrics like Harris Tweed and certain silks from Suffolk – have experienced increased demand.” Miln says the production upswing at such firms may be in the region of 20%. But to regain a real economic impact UK textiles manufacturers would need to win significant contracts making at least medium if not high volume products for retail both domestically and in international markets. Could this be achieved?
Rick Mejia, MD of technical textiles specialist Milliken Europe is dubious about the potential of seeing large scale garment and fabric production return to the UK (p34). But Miln is relatively optimistic about opportunities at the mid-volume level thanks to the rise of ‘fast fashion’. “Debate and discussion among retailers about bringing more manufacturing back to the UK is very real,” says Miln. “The trend for fast fashion, which has become prevalent in the last couple of years, allows retailers to inject new seasonal fashions on a regular basis but also allows them to be a lot more flexible in their sourcing strategies.” Examples of retailers which have already made advances down this road
Sophia Campion recently helped raise awareness of the resilience of traditional textile manufacturing in the UK with this image, a winner at the EEF Photogragy Awards 2013
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 31
sectorfocus include John Lewis, George at Asda and Top Shop among others. Last year John Lewis announced that it would increase UK sourcing of garments 15% over two years, building on a ‘Made in Britain’ brand which totalled £480m for the high street and online retailer in 2012. (Read ’s coverage of this announcement at bit.ly/JohnLewisreshoring.) “The key to making reshoring happen on a large scale is that retailers must be able to find the capacity in the UK to meet their wants and needs,” continues Miln. “This means that they must be able to buy at a price point that is consistent with their margin.” This lays down a challenge to UK textile manufacturers who hope for a revival of mid-volume manufacturing resembling, to some extent, the golden days of the industry. It must face up to a pressing need to modernise its production equipment, improve the efficiency of its product and service platforms and upskill its workers – not to mention attract a new generation of vibrant, ambitious employees, which Mejia says is challenging for a “battered” industry (p35). Addressing such obstacles to growth will mean moving quickly from a low baseline for most companies in a sector where around 95% of firms are micro businesses and where capital investment had almost ground to a halt in many cases until very recently. Last year, Business Secretary Vince Cable spoke at an event at the
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Clothworkers Hall in London which was designed to provoke a renaissance in UK textiles manufacturing. He latched onto the need to inject investment in the latest production technologies into the sector to bring it into the 21st Century. Such technology turnarounds have changed the fortunes of some longstanding textile manufacturers in the UK. Fox Brothers, based in Dorset is a case in point. In 2009 the firm – which is almost 250 years old – was acquired by former Dragon’s Den star and entrepreneur Deborah Meaden. It was in a fairly parlous state at the time with outdated production technology, business processes and strategic vision. Injecting time, money, and new talent and leadership has saved this heritage firm and made it competitive in today’s markets. It is now a key supplier to premium high street brand Jack Wills, and despite its location far from the traditional sector skills hub in the North West, the firm is supporting apprenticeships in order to protect its future. Sadly, Fox Brothers, and other textiles firms that invest in training and development, both for new recruits and existing staff, are in a small minority. Just 10% of fashion and textiles sector employees received job-related training and education in 2012-2013 according to an ONS labour force survey, and when it comes specifically to manufacturing staff this fell to 7%.
Skills are highlighted as a key barrier to competitiveness in most sectors – not just manufacturing – but with the national average for training in 2012-2013 standing at 26% clearly most textiles employers need to think long and hard about their commitment to seeing the sector – and their individual businesses – thrive. A common defence from employers would be that suitable technical training has died out in the UK and that relevant courses are no longer available to match their business needs. There is certainly something in this, however, the Textile Centre of Excellence in Huddersfield has been a stalwart guardian of industry skills since the 1970s and recently assisted in the development of a new higher apprenticeship framework for fashion and textiles which hopes to attract 300 trainees in 2014 (p45). By latching onto schemes like this and making use of government investment incentives like the Regional Growth Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, UK textile manufacturers can make the most of this moment of interest in UK sourcing from big retailers and become a base for the export of more textiles abroad – something Miln says is a key focus for his trade association this year. Without swift action to raise the ambitions of the sector however, the moment could yet be lost. For insight into the potential of the UK technical textiles sector, not addressed in this article, see our lead interview with Rick Mejia, MD of Milliken Euroupe on p34. FURTHER READING: Take a look at ’s recent textiles sector coverage online James Pozzi interviews reshorer Rapanui: bit.ly/RapanuiReshore Callum Bentley explores 3D printing applications in textiles manufacturing: bit.ly/Fitforpurpose also on p54 Funding package for Lancashire textile manufacturer: bit.ly/RSopergetsfunding Kinky Knickers administration and reprieve: bit.ly/ KinkyKnickersadmin and bit.ly/ KinkyKnickersreprieve
Textiles
SECTOR FOCUS
Performance data The below data from the Office for National Statistics shows the performance of the UK fashion and textiles sector since 2007. Office for National Statistics Detailed Index of Production: by SIC 2007 Seasonally adjusted 2010 = 100 Rob and Martin Drake-Knight, the founding brother of Rapanui which recently reshored manufacturing to the Isle of Wight
Meet the manufacturer The key to supporting large scale reshoring of textiles manufacturing is being able to offer retailers the capacity they need at a price they like. Analysing the three different component industries that make up fashion and textiles manufacturing shows an interesting comparison in productivity performance. Textile productivity has remained steady since the middle of 2011 although this is still well below the recent peak of quarter three 2010 that stood at 103.6. Wearing apparel stands higher than the trough quarter four 2009 after a brief flurry of activity in mid-2011. The manufacture of leather and related products that endured a difficult start to 2012, has shown good growth since and now stands over 20% higher than the 2010 average. Office for National. Value of exports Balance of Payments basis: Seasonally adjusted
But it also relies on increasing the visibility of firms that are able to offer them this – they do exist says Kate Hills, founder of the website Make it British, which is launching a new show in June this year to help match buyers with suitable UK textiles and garment manufacturers. “Our aim is not only to introduce buyers from companies of all sizes to factories that can make their products, but also to inspire them with a programme of seminars, led by industry experts, that can provide guidance on manufacturing in the UK,” she says. Ms Hills’ new enterprise comes on the back of an influx of enquires on her website. “As enquiries for UK manufacturers increased significantly over the past year, I realised that there was no one sourcing event for buyers to attend to meet them all,” she explains. “The manufacturers too were contacting us looking to reach new customers. I found myself providing a matchmaking service between both parties, and quickly recognised that this event could streamline this service and bring added value”.
As with wider UK manufacturing exports, the performance for UK manufactured fashion and textiles goods has increased significantly and continues to grow. While the EU remains the largest export market for UK-made textiles and garments, as with other manufacturing sectors, there has been a sizable, steady increase in exports to non-EU markets in since 2007 with a pick-up in pace since 2010. Exports to non-EU markets stood at £845 million in quarter three 2013, up from the £506 million recorded in the quarter three in 2007.
While representative at ReshoreUK, which recently helped Isle of White manufacture Rapanui, relocate its production (bit.ly/RapanuiReshore) and bigger exhibitions like the London Garments Expo might disagree with the claim that this meet-and-match proposition is unique, it certainly offers a new and accessible way for manufacturers and buyers alike to prospect for business relationships in the UK. Make it in British’s inaugural Meet the Manufacturer event will take place in London on June 11-12. For more information go to www.meetthemanufacturer.co.uk *Unless stated otherwise, sector statistics are sourced, with thanks, from Creative Skillset, www.skillset.org March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 33
INTERVIEW growth Rick Mejia, MD of Milliken Europe, talks to Jane Gray about growth opportunities and challenges for technical textiles and deciding on manufacturing as a career industry.
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extile manufacturing for apparel has migrated to Asia. They have the skills set for it now and it is unlikely that we’ll see any real return of volume, commodity manufacturing to the UK.” It’s a disappointing opening statement to my lead interview alongside a sector focus on UK textiles making (p30) – but that’s before Rick Mejia, MD of Milliken Europe starts waxing lyrical about the applications and growth potential of technical textiles, his company’s speciality. “There has been a bit of a renaissance in manufacturing returning West after the Global Financial Crisis. We’ve seen it in the US and in the UK,” acknowledges Mr Mejia. “But honestly, in many cases that is because the talent in supply chain management became so depleted that companies found themselves without the ability to manage the complex global supply chains they had created.” This prompted reversion says Mejia, but he claims that in the US, reshored manufacturing for commodity items is now swinging back once again to low cost economies after investment in supply chain management capability at point of manufacture – rather than from a Western HQ.
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The sizing creel at Milliken Industrial’s Bury site
Straight out of uni I got a job offer at Microsoft. I turned it down because at that point I decided I wanted to go into manufacturing. I wanted to feel the product of my work which is something you can’t do in the software industry
Rick Mejia, MD, Milliken Europe
Challenges to growth Mejia hit on two key obstacles to growth and competitiveness for the technical textile sector and wider industry in the UK. Firstly, the ability to attract talent and secondly, energy. “The single biggest issue we have, both in the UK and on the continent, is talent. It is very difficult to find talent that is interested in joining an industry that has been battered as textiles has in Europe,” says Mejia. “Whether we are looking for engineers or for financial leadership and skill we have a very hard time finding candidates that want to join the industry or who have experience. “Any chance of a renaissance in textiles manufacturing in the UK will be severely hampered by this.” Continuing to address energy costs and security of supply, Mejia shares, “We are constantly looking at energy and, quite frankly, it is one of our biggest concerns. “The prognosis for energy costs in the UK in the next few years is daunting,” Mejia explains. “Specifically this is due to the spikes that are projected due to having insufficient supply to match demand.” Milliken focusses heavily on sustainability to try and counteract energy risks says Mejia - particularly in its commercial carpets division. “We use a lot of recycled material and we are about to invest in a solid fuel regeneration facility at Wigan to take waste from our factories around the UK.”
Any chance of a renaissance in textiles manufacturing in the UK will be severely hampered by difficulty attracting talent
INTERVIEW
An outsider perspective Much commentary on industrial strengths and weaknesses in the UK comes from indigenous business leaders, politicians and trade body representatives. US-born and having spent a large part of his professional life on the other side of the Pond, how does Rick Mejia view the competitiveness of British manufacturing? “One difference which was immediately apparent to me on coming to the UK – and Europe more generally – was the approach to innovation compared to the US,” he comments. “In the US, there is always someone knocking on your door with a new widget or a new product which they believe is the next big thing. “There is not the same level of activity here in the UK. There seems to be much more acceptance that things are done in a traditional way because that is the way they always have been done.” On a more positive note, Mejia admires the level of pride that British manufacturers pour into their work. “I’m struck by the way people seem to leave a little of themselves in every product that goes out the door. “In the US, the approach tends to be a lot more ‘mechanical’.”
Moving on to focus on opportunity, Mejia says, “The best prospect for the UK is to come out with products that are not commoditised and which can solve unique problems. These businesses might be on a smaller scale but they will be characterised by a level of technical ability and knowledge which creates significant value.”
Getting growth
The US-born business leader is a level headed strategist with a CV which boasts a long list of achievements in turning around business interests to achieve profitable growth. Having taken the helm at Milliken Europe in 2012, Mr Mejia is single minded about the same goal. “Growth is the target,” he says simply. “This means different things across our three main business divisions but the vision is the same.” Elaborating, Mejia explains what he wants for Milliken Europe’s three core business strands which make car airbags, commercial carpets and dust control products – a fancy term for door mats. “For airbags we need to add capacity,” he says – a straight forward route to growth given the booming UK automotive industry.
Milliken’s airbag making hub is based in Bury and the division won ’s prize for World Class Manufacturing at The Manufacturer of the Year Awards 2013 in December last year. “For carpets we need to expand in Europe and the Middle East and invest in creating new designs that keep us in the lead, like our recently launched Nordic Stories collection.” This moody colour theme was designed in the UK and Mejia hopes it will bring in around £25m a year over the design lifecycle. “For the mats division it’s about making sure we continue to drive a shift, which is already underway, towards installed systems rather than leased, removable mats.” Mejia sees an opportunity to develop Milliken’s service offerings as well as products in response to this shift. “Whereas suppliers of mats to commercial premises like supermarkets and hotels used to offer a service which leased a mat to a customer and which they would replace when it needed cleaning, now we can move towards localised cleaning services,” Mejia explains. While dedicated to the growth of all Milliken’s businesses Mejia admits a certain soft spot for the mats division – since it was via this business March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 35
Rick Mejia, MD, Milliken Europe
BIOGRAPHY Rick Mejia MD, Milliken Europe
Education: Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire: Master of Business Administration and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts BS, Nuclear Engineering; BS, Political Science with minor in European Studies 2001:
While still studying at MIT, Mejia worked as product manager intern at Microsoft Corporation, Washington, USA
2002:
Appointed director of marketing at Rehamed International, and manufacturer of swimming pool hoists. Meija was based in Florida
2003:
Promoted to president/ general manager at Rehamed International
2007:
Appointed global business manager, Walk Off Matts, a division on Milliken International
2012:
Appointed managing director Milliken Europe
Rick is married with two children who are both now educated in England. To balance time travelling with work, Rick spends his leisure time building Lego models and attending dance recitals.
that he first joined the global company in 2007. “People do pull me up on it,” he grimaces guiltily. “I like it partly because of the additional familiarity I have with the business from having worked there, but also because few people expect door mats to be interesting – and really, the value proposition we offer customers is very innovative. “We’ve done studies which show how much our systems can save on cleaning costs – but also how they can extend the life of expensive commercial flooring. Controlling the entry of dust and dirt into a building can extend the life of flooring by as much as two or three times which means the customer doesn’t have to go to the expense or suffer the business disruption of replacing flooring for a much longer period.” It’s such unexpected applications and value propositions in the world of technical textiles which excite Mejia about his work. “I don’t think people think about textiles in this way very often. But I am fascinated by the number of unique places where textiles play a role in industry, sports and peoples everyday lives.” Giving an example, Mejia talks about a reinforcement fabric which Milliken makes in Ghent, Belgium. “It goes inside high performance tyres – in some cases Formula 1 tyres.” Such fabrics exist inside all tyres says Mejia. “They are critical to a car being able to function. But most people don’t know it.” Would Mejia like more recognition for the contribution technical textiles make to so many parts of the economy and to living standards? “Personally, I wish that people knew us better, but it is difficult to explain what we do succinctly,” responds Mejia. “Also, in the past we have been very secretive, this makes it harder to promote your contribution. “I do push for us to be active in our communities though,” Mejia assures. He also says Milliken is seeking out an appropriate trade body through which to become more engaged in its industrial community and influence relevant policy.
Generalists versus specialists
Mejia speaks with authority on the needs of the Milliken’s businesses in the
36 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
INTERVIEW
High and lows Rick Mejia’s best and worst career moments: Career crunch point: “Straight out of uni I got a job offer at Microsoft. I turned it down because at that point I decided I wanted to go into manufacturing. I wanted to feel the product of my work which is something you can’t do in the software industry. It was the best and most positive moment in my career because it took me into a challenging space.” No regrets – but hard decisions: I am very thorough and methodical in my decision making and there I can’t think of a decision I regret in my career. However, the most difficult decisions to come to are those decisions which effect the livelihood of others. Financially, it can be easy to make the case for cutting jobs, but emotionally it is extremely hard.
Growth is the target, this means different things across our three main business divisions but the vision is the same UK and Europe – two markets which are managed almost independently he says. But he is not a textiles man by training. As nuclear engineer and business administration graduate, did he find it difficult to gain the confidence of textiles specialists when he joined the industry? “Whatever industry you are in, specialists will tell you about its unique competitive and technical challenges, but at the end of the day running a business in any industry is pretty similar. “The strategic challenges may be different,” Mejia admits, “and the levers you pull on to address them may be different. But fundamentally, business is business. It’s about creating a product which solves a unique problem in the marketplace.”
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6Osecond Dr Adrian Hirst, BOHS
interview
Dr Adrian Hirst BOHS In February, the British Occupational Hygiene Society released new insight into the causes of occupational cancer in the UK. Dr Adrian Hirst talks to about attitudes towards managing worker health in industry. : Health and safety is often talked about in business, but while safety performance in UK manufacturing has improved over the years, would you say the same is true of worker health? No. For a start, it’s fair to say the industry hasn’t measured the health side as effectively as it has the safety. We don’t see the effects of occupational hazards immediately. It’s very easy to stop someone falling off a ladder or slipping on a wire, but when it comes to a health hazard, everyone is exposed and it’s simply a question of how much. You move from the more probabilistic approach of safety to one of inevitability in health. It seems a bit too complicated for many. : What is the next big occupational health threat to manufacturing workers? It’s difficult to make predictions. However a link has been shown between shift work and breast cancer. More research will be carried out on this which may have an impact on the guidance about running shift systems. There is also a lot of talk about the use of new materials such as nano particles where the long term health effects are
We don’t see the effects of occupational hazards immediately 38 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
not fully known and need further research. There has always been a risk in industries working diesel exhaust emissions and wood dust as well as some solvents metals. : Asbestos is a high cause of existing occupational cancer conditions, but are reported cases tailing off now? They are declining, but not at the rate they should be. There is a long latency period between exposure to a substance and the onset of cancer. With asbestos this can be as high as 40 years. We still have a high rate of cases from people who were exposed a long time ago and today, people are still left exposed through badly managed building refurbishment and maintenance. : Are manufacturers aware of link between reducing health risks, such as ones linked to cancer, and improving efficiency? While some manufacturers are, unfortunately the vast majority aren’t. I find they struggle to come to terms with direct
Future Factory: Health & Safety Dr Adrian Hirst will present at ’s Future Factory: Health & Safety conference on April 29 in London. His contribution will highlight the benefits of best practice in occupational hygiene. For a longer interview with Dr Hirst go to bit.ly/BOHSInterview For more information about BOHS research into UK occupational cancer go to www.bohs.org/worldcancerday
assessment for health risks. They often don’t form a connection between health risk with efficiency, quality and productivity. An example would be workers putting masks on to protect against dust. Masks typically cost around £4, which appears easier than spending, for example, £50,000 on an extraction system for the facility. But often they don’t factor in the number of masks they’ll use and the training required to get the operators to use them, resulting in a decrease in productivity. If you do those kind of calculations, then going for the better level of control makes more sense in the long term.
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Biomass
Part of the Sustainable Solution? Peter Russell, Royal Bank of Scotland’s head of manufacturing and industrials, examines the compelling case for companies to make the commercial decision to switch to sustainable energy options.
40 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
T
he Carbon Trust estimates that £1.6bn is spent unnecessarily each year by UK mid-market businesses on their energy bills and that savings of 15% or more are easily achievable. With energy costs rising steadily, there can be few manufacturing companies today that have not seen the opportunity to become more operationally efficient by identifying ways and means of reducing their energy use and costs. There is also the added benefit of strengthening the ‘green’ reputation of a business and the legal requirements of complying with environmental regulation. The conversion to biomass as a source for energy could represent part of the solution for spiralling operating costs. The technology uses materials derived from sustainable sources such as plants, wood pellets and even manufacturing waste to produce heat and electricity. Its ability to produce low carbon energy quickly and on demand at a relatively low cost presents an encouraging argument for businesses who wish to secure a sustainable supply and future proof their bills. Furthermore unlike other renewable technologies such as wind it is not dependent on weather conditions.
Competitive Power guaranteed
The UK government has already provided its support for the switch to biomass via the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme, the world’s first long-term financial support programme for renewable heat. The RHI pays participants of the scheme that generate and use sustainable energy such as biomass to heat their buildings. A business that installs a medium biomass boiler with a capacity of 250kWth, which operates for seven hours a day in winter and three hours a day in summer (or 1,825 hours per annum), will receive 4.7p per kWh for the first 1,314 hours. The rate is 1.9p per kWh for the remaining 511 hours. This results in a total annual payment of £17,866. Businesses eligible for the scheme apply directly to
The conversion to biomass as a source for energy could represent part of the solution for spiralling operating costs
Biomass – Part of the Sustainable Solution?
the government energy trade body OFGEM and once accepted receive a guaranteed index-linked payment every three months for up to 20 years. With biomass able to cut fuel bills by almost 50% per annum and their existing energy bills likely to be augmented by energy taxes to pay for the scheme, makes good business sense, whatever the company’s size. The government is not alone is showing its support, UK power supplier giant Drax is also adopting biomass, converting three of its six generating units to burn wood pellets as part of a £750m investment programme and has built its own wood pellet plants to ensure the sustainable supply chain it needs.
Carbon is a currency
With waste reduction being high on the list of manufacturers’ priorities, biomass offers yet further appeal as feedstock sources include crops, agricultural residues and even food waste which manufacturers can recycle to produce energy. This is exemplified by the construction of a biomass Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant at Rothes Distillers in Speyside in 2011 which RBS supported. It was a joint venture between Helius Energy, Rabo Project Equity BV and the Combination of Rothes Distillers (CoRD). The CHP plant combusts a combination of whisky distillery by-products and wood chips to generate 7.2MWe – equivalent to the electrical demand
of about 9,000 homes1. This is in conjunction with saving more than 20,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. Furthermore, the plant’s on-site evaporator turns the liquid co-product of whisky production (‘pot ale’) into a concentrated organic fertiliser and an animal feed for local farmers. Biomass is central to the sustainable and efficient operations of this business. The project has since won a string of awards, including ‘Renewable Energy Transaction of the Year’ and ‘Best Environmental Initiative’. SME’s are also benefiting from sustainable solutions such as biomass. A new Energy Audit scheme from NatWest and RBS – launched earlier this year alongside business specialists Mentor – identifies ways that these businesses can cut their energy costs, carbon footprint and asses the potential for renewable energy generation . A pilot of the audits, aimed at businesses that spend between £10,000 and £200,000 a year on energy, demonstrated some remarkable successes for clients, using a combination of measures which ranged from renegotiating existing energy tariffs to investment in renewable energy solutions such as biomass. In the pilot, clients experienced an average saving of £23,000 or up to 34% of their energy spend. Mark Eastwood, Head of Manufacturing for NatWest’s Commercial Banking Division, which
Sustainable Manufacturing
The Carbon Trust estimates that £1.6bn is spent unnecessarily each year by UK businesses on their energy bills and that savings of 15% or more are easily achievable
looks after SME businesses, said: “Rising energy costs are bound to have a huge impact on energyhungry manufacturing businesses. “This is one of our key focuses for customers and we are actively speaking to them about their energy use and how they’re going to manage increasing costs. “Biomass is a great option for manufacturers who often have left over materials and waste which could be transformed through industrial burners. “Furniture manufacturer Contrax identified a potential saving of over £6,000 on their annual energy bill after undergoing a Mentor energy audit. As part of a host of changes, costing around only £2,000 to implement, they introduced industrial waste burners which not only helped reduce their energy bill, but minimised the need for waste storage between skips.” All this, and a reduced carbon footprint too – which is good news for all of us. 1
districtenergy.org
further information Peter Russell Head of Manufacturing & Industrials, RBS Corporate & Institutional Banking T: (0)20 7672 1007 E: peter.russell@rbs.co.ukk Mark Eastwood Head of Manufacturing, NatWest Commercial Banking T: (0)7900 661 376 E: mark.eastwood@natwest.com
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 41
Effective Visual Management
A Case Study in World Class Manufacturing Performance Presspart’s Lean Workforce Drive Bottom Line Improvements Background
Presspart in Blackburn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Heitkamp and Thumann, a leading global supplier of precision formed metal and plastic components. The Blackburn site produces precision drawn metal components for both Industrial and Pharmaceutical uses.
The challenge
During the economic challenges towards the end of the first decade of the Millennium a brave
42 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
decision was made to move away from its less profitable markets which represented 20% of business. This resulted in a reduction in the workforce and placed a greater focus on the need to grow the industrial side of the business. In particular Presspart won significant volume contracts with a number of companies which were high volume - low margin contracts. Wanting to successfully meet the demands of this new volume business without inflating labour costs, Presspart realised it was essential they improved
Workplace Organisation depicting zoned areas
productivity and reduced operating costs in order to remain competitive and boost profits.
The solution
An extensive programme of workforce development was required which would unlock value and increase performance in a continuous and sustainable way. CQM Training & Consultancy Ltd, a highly respected business improvement company, designed a structured Lean Development Programme encompassing all levels of the organisation, from the Shop floor to Senior Management. The training was underpinned by a respected and recognised qualification. Participating members of the workforce were divided into teams; the ultimate objective of each team being to influence decision making, implement change, challenge behaviours and positively affect business performance. Shop floor workers, under the guidance of Team Leaders, drew upon their detailed knowledge of the working environment to identify key issues impacting upon the efficient flow of production. These key issues became the focus of CQM T&C’s training and development programme. CQM T&C coached and supported team members to expertly use Lean
World Class Manufacturing
CASE STUDY
Recognition of Success Presspart now manufactures 100 million additional components annually without incurring an increase in the workforce 2 years into this programme of development the company has enjoyed highly significant increases in net profit Dramatic improvements in set up and change over times whilst also increasing customer service levels Significant percentage increase in OEE Reduction in WIP and finished goods coupled with enhanced delivery schedule adherence Increase in both capacity and workplace utilisation due to a reduction of required storage Despite reductions in WIP and stock, lead times have also been reduced Greatly improved communication and team work with Shop floor ownership of improvement processes
Improved Production Flow
principles to analyse the issues for themselves, and were subsequently coached to use their initiative to formulate a real improvement and cost saving. Feedback from the teams to Senior Management revealed impressive cost savings along with significantly increased output. Tony Cross, Operations Manager at Presspart commented, ‘CQM T&C promised us a ‘Deep and Narrow’ implementation of Lean philosophy. Apart from the results speaking for themselves, we have transformed our operational performance and culture over the last 4 years with significant input from CQM T&C. We are hugely encouraged by the levels of sustainability that have been achieved and which continue’.
Why CQM Training & Consultancy?
With over 20 years experience of developing practical, performance enhancing solutions, CQM T&C programmes always seek to provide a sustainable return on investment, behavioural change and increased competitiveness.
Peter Booth, Managing Director, CQM T&C maintains ‘Our method of working with clients who really want to improve their performance is surprisingly cost effective. We will map your business to establish its “Lean” Maturity; set specific performance targets so you can measure success right back to EBITDA; develop and coach your people to deliver the improvements and measure their impact – this way you don’t become dependent upon us’. Peter Booth went on to say ‘If you want to acknowledge the efforts of your teams we can also offer a recognised qualification – Oh and we are the only training and consultancy organisation to offer a money back guarantee! It’s a no brainer really’.
A visible change in culture embedded across the entire workforce as a direct result of this programme
CQM T&C’s team of coaches and facilitators will work with you to drive your performance in the same direction as Presspart if like them you are committed. To discuss how we can help improve your bottom line call us today on 0114 2813747 or email enquiries@cqmltd.co.uk For more information visit www.cqmltd.co.uk Follow us on: @CQMtc CQM Training & Consultancy Ltd CQM Training & Consultancy Ltd
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 43
EEF Insights
A world of opportunity Mike Rigby, head of manufacturing at Barclays on UK manufacturers in the global market place.
also tells of a marked increase in the number of manufacturers carrying out offshore activity. Almost a third of respondents conduct over 40% of their business offshore compared to less than a fifth a year ago. Encouraging manufacturing clients to have the confidence to export and to helping them build that confidence is a central part of my job. There are two main elements to doing this. Firstly, securing the right payment mechanism – using trade finance to ensure payment and managing profit margin by protecting the budgeted foreign exchange rate. Secondly, enabling clients to benefit from the experience Barclays has built up from negotiating contracts in foreign territories.
HVOs and SMEs
T
he level of political dialogue around exporting remains very high. But how does this rhetoric land with a typical manufacturing SME. Exporting can appear daunting to SMEs venturing into new markets for the first time and given the recent economic climate, it’s unsurprising that many are more focused on domestic strategies. But the opportunities of operating globally cannot be overstated. Taking that first step into new markets brings with it a variety of concerns, ranging from how to identify the right market and opportunity to how to ensure you get paid for the goods provided. That said, two recent reports show increasing appetite among manufacturers to invest, export and grow their international footprint. Last month’s EEF/Barclays Exporters Report found that UK manufacturers are adopting a wide range of strategies to take advantage of escalating demand in emerging markets. The release of ’s Annual Manufacturing Report (AMR), which is produced in association with Barclays,
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EXPORTS
There is no cap on the potential that exists for well-prepared manufacturers venturing overseas. The High Value Opportunities (HVO) programme is a UKTI initiative that identifies and supports UK businesses, of all sizes, to be a part of large scale overseas projects. One hundred HVOs have been identified including projects like the Christchurch Reconstruction project in New Zealand to the delivery of the 2018 football World Cup in Russia. Yet, because of their scale, there exists a misconception that such projects are the preserve of the largest UK businesses. The reality is that HVOs offer smaller UK businesses the possibility of being involved in much larger projects than they have been in the past, connecting them with valuable new contracts and setting a precedent for large contract delivery. To make this a reality however, there are a number of points a manufacturing SME should consider. First and foremost, a business must target opportunities that it is well placed to deliver. Key to this is a thorough understanding of the opportunity being chased, so it is important to seek help and expertise. As well as approaching UKTI, to help identify the right opportunities, I would encourage manufacturers to speak to their bank, legal advisors and accounting partners who can provide them with a broad range of support.
Diana Mae Worrall
Employee of the Month March 2014 Diana Mae Worrall Footwear apprentice Dr Martens
EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH
: What is your role and what are the main responsibilities? I have been an apprentice with Dr. Martens at its Cobbs Lane factory in Wollaston since last April. It’s a small factory, so the team is very closeknit. My main responsibility is to learn as much about the art of industrial manufacturing as possible. There are four main areas in the factory: clicking – cutting leather, closing – stitching the leather in to an upper, lasting – moulding and attaching the sole and shoe room – finishing and boxing. I must learn how to safely perform all these processes to the correct standards. I learn a lot from my colleagues. : What are the key technical skills you use? The appropriate technical skills depend on the area of the factory I’m working in. Clicking requires attention to detail, being able to spot any defects hiding under the surface of the leather. Space awareness is also very important to utilise the leather in the best way possible. Closing is about correct handling of the leather when feeding it through sewing machines. Lasting involves a lot of heavy machinery and is my favourite area at the moment. To work in the shoe room you must have and eye for detail and a steady hand. : What personal characteristics help you in your role? People say, “respect is earned”. I have so much respect for the people at Dr. Martens. Some of my colleagues have literally been here for longer than I’ve been on the planet. They are masters of their craft. I respect that and in return they respect me. Having a ‘can do’ attitude
CV in brief Diana Mae Worrall Age: 18 Education: BTEC level 3 in fashion and clothing Career to date: Footwear apprentice at Dr. Martens Hobbies and interests: Spending time with friends and family, shopping, boxing, going to the gym
People say, “respect is earned”. I have so much respect for the people at Dr. Martens. Some of my colleagues have literally been here for longer than I’ve been on the planet. They are masters of their craft
towards everything ensures I learn as much as possible. Enthusiasm is key to showing other people that I am willing to learn. I always try to be friendly and approachable so that if I - as apprentices do - make a mistake, people feel they can talk to me about it and not feel uncomfortable. : What do you consider to be your biggest personal success at the company so far? The pinnacle has been designing my own pair of boots for display at the national apprenticeship awards. This involved altering and re-cutting patterns to make the boots from scratch. I had an immense sense of pride when they were finished. : Do you have a grand career ambition? In the near future I hope to work in the factory as an Improver. After that I will be fully qualified in the area of my choice and eventually I’d like to have a management position. : What do you think is the best way to attract more young talent into manufacturing? Educate them in it. Make sure they know what’s out there and the opportunities that can come from it. Educate teachers, tutors and parents in the good that can come from getting in to manufacturing. I personally don’t know why more young people don’t get in to manufacturing jobs. What more can they ask for? Get qualifications, get experience, get paid and make connections.
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 45
Last year Shana Tekila (pictured standing, right) undertook a six-week internship with the ASOS Stitching Academy, launched in 2013. She now hopes to complete a higher apprenticeship in fashion and textiles
To complement this month’s textiles sector focus (p31) takes a look at the newly launched Higher Apprenticeship in Fashion and Textiles framework.
L
ast year, John Lewis committed to achieve 15% growth in its UK sourced textiles over two years. The target will build on a ‘Made in UK’ brand at the high street retailer which totalled £480m in 2012. Furthermore, John Lewis’s decision to bring more textiles and garment making back to the UK is not an isolated incident. Fashion retailers from high end names to budget buys like George at Asda have been reshoring – the changes have put pressure on supply chains used to long shipping periods to be much leaner and more responsive according to coat hanger manufacturer Mainetti (see bit.ly/Whatsuccesshangson)
46 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
They have also made it acutely obvious however, that the UK textile manufacturing industry has experienced a slump in skills and technical capability and there has been a rush in recent years to develop new training schemes and investment programmes in order to increase the sector’s competitiveness and sieze the opportunity to gain business while it still lasts. As Rick Mejia, MD of technical textiles manufacturer Milliken Europe points out in our lead interview (p34), fashion retailer reshoring may yet prove to simply be a knee-jerk reaction to supply chain deficiencies and if UK firms cannot quickly develop the skills and capacity to service their demand the decision may not stick.
To protect against this, 2011 saw the launch of the first ever national apprenticeship scheme for fashion and textile apparel. This lower level skills qualification, which charity Fashion Enter was instrumental in creating, has since been supplemented with more advanced courses and in November last year a level 4 framework for a higher apprenticeship in fashion and textiles finally came into being. The framework was developed collaboratively by the Skills Funding Agency – the administrative end of the National Apprenticeship Service – the Textile Centre of Excellence in Huddersfield and the North West Textile Network. A number of employers also had direct input including: ASOS, Camira Fabrics, Eveden, The Garment Studio, Henry Lloyd, New Look, Panaz, Rollington Knitwear and Westwood Yarn. The higher apprenticeship framework takes a minimum of 18 months to complete and while some engineering and manufacturing employers may consider this insufficient – many commonly state that three years is the minimum time needed to train a capable and reliable employee – Michele Roberts, head of apprenticeships programme development at the Skill Funding Agency assures that all the employers involved are satisfied with the content.
Textile Apprenticeship
WORKFORCE & SKILLS
Skills Gap
Last year, John Lewis committed to achieve 15% growth in its UK sourced textiles over two years.
“The framework is a combined qualification which requires apprentices to complete both a technical textiles pathway and a product development and sourcing pathway,” she explains. “Feedback from the employers involved in developing the framework indicates that they are satisfied.” The Skills Funding Agency, alongside industry partners, is now seeking recruits to form the first wave of higher apprentices on the new framework. “We have a target to see three hundred people enrol this year,” says Ms Roberts and so far, she is confident about the level of interest the framework is attracting. To further raise awareness however, there are plans to create a ‘Sector in the Spotlight’ YouTube video to promote opportunities in fashion and textiles and increase understanding of the available qualification routes. Sector in the Spotlight videos are created by the National Apprenticeship Service – SFA’s ‘shop window’ – and a number of videos already exist to promote apprenticeships as an entry route to careers including legal services, IT and creative industries. A manufacturing Sector in the Spotlight video features input from apprentices at MBDA, BAE Systems and SMEs Warren Services and Berthen Boats which recently won sector skills council Semta’s SME Investment of the Year Award for its commitment to apprenticeships in the marine industry (p49). “The videos have proved a very successful way of raising awareness about different apprenticeship frameworks,” says Roberts. FURTHER READING: For more information about the higher apprenticeship in fashion and textiles go to www.apprenticeships.org.uk or call 08000 150 600
Cheryl Phillips, Skills Gap programme director at the Design and Technology Association gave us another update on integration of teacher training and industry-schools engagement in February. This time Cheryl’s update focussed on midlands-based SME and Skills Gap pilot partner Alucast. Having already invested time in similar teacher training sessions to those Cheryl described at metrology firm Renishaw, Alucast was ready to bring school children into the frame and host a well prepared visit from the ACE Academy, Tipton. The six weeks of teacher training had grounded the ACE Academy D&T teachers with a sound knowledge of the businesses skills needs and how they related to curriculum content. Lessons in the run-up to the visit had therefore been planned to embed a baseline knowledge of these skills and their applications, so that the children would gain more value from seeing them in action in industry. The visit to Alucast, a castings specialist which supplied parts for the London 2012 Olympic torch, helped the children progress with a challenge designed collaboratively by teaching staff and Alucast employees, to make their own cast products from a variety of materials in school. As this project goes ahead, Alucast hopes that the problem solving and self-management skills required for success will help draw out the softer skills it. And other companies require of prospective employees, as well as grounding the children with sound technical understanding. Commenting on the visit Graham Williams, a D&T teacher from ACE Academy, said: “It was great for pupils to see things for themselves. As I’d visited the foundry before with my D&T colleagues, I was able to pick up on significant points which the Alucast employees were demonstrating and link these to what we’ve been discussing in school. “I’m looking forward to the business coaches working with us in classroom sessions as their input will help reinforce the messages as we put new skills into practice” A further strength of this school visit was that Alucast ensured its work was put into context and made clear to the children how its employees are part of a greater industrial enterprise. To do this, Alucast invited a customer from its high-end automotive business to attend and talk about the importance of Alucast’s products to their somewhat flashier products. To read the full report of this visit go to bit.ly/SkillsGapupdate3 For more information about the Skills Gap programme contact cheryl.phillips@data.org.uk
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 47
The Big Bang Fair
Engineering’s for cool kids. The Big Bang message is getting through
Full STEM ahead! Paul Jackson, CEO of EngineeringUK, organiser of the Big Bang Fair, raves about the success of the nation’s biggest STEM careers fair and urges employers to capitalise on it through collaboration.
I
n five short years, The Big Bang Fair has established itself as the UK’s flagship careers event for science and engineering. A record 70,000 visitors registered to attend the free event at The NEC in Birmingham on March 13-16 this year. It’s now the UK’s largest youth event for 11-14 year-olds – an amazing feat for a careers fair.
More than 170 organisations from the world of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) take part in The Big Bang Fair. This is because, like us, they see that it is vital to inspire the
WORKFORCE & SKILLS
next generation to be our future scientists and engineers. The UK needs to 87,000 engineers per year to meet 2020 demand and we are committed to working with the wider engineering community – government, business and industry, education and professional bodies – to close the skills gap. The fair’s rapid growth is positive indication that we’re on the right track. Over the last few years, we have seen a seachange in public attitude which shows that young people, teachers and parents want to find out more about the opportunities available in these growing and vital industries. With the vast range of activities, shows and exhibits on offer, the fair provides an inspirational introduction to the world of science and engineering. And the inspiration is underpinned by robust careers information and resources, developed in partnership with employers and professional bodies. What the fair’s example clearly shows is that the key to making a lasting national impact is collaboration. In the past, every learned society and company created its own bit of education outreach, resulting in lots of stuff and not enough impact. There is an important role for business and industry to support schools in their understanding of how the subjects they study apply to the world of work and to keep teachers up-to-date with current business practices. The Big Bang and Tomorrow’s Engineers – another EngineeringUK programme – reach upward of 150,000 young people a year, with a 50/50 split between boys and girls – this five times the number of calls received by the National Careers Service in 2013, but we could reach thousands more with more employer support. We know that collaborative engagement works. Last year, when we measured our programmes’ impact on young people, we found that they significantly increased the appeal of science and engineering careers. For example, before The Big Bang Fair 63% said a career in science was appealing and 31% engineering. After the fair, this increased to 83% and 53% respectively. Furthermore, 53% of young people who have taken part in a Tomorrow’s Engineers activity, say they know what engineers do compared to a national average of 30%. I don’t want to be talking about the STEM skills shortfall in another ten years, by which time it will be too late for many industries, for the UK economy and for a generation of young people with STEM talent. This means joined-up action now – get involved and play your part. FURTHER READING: Find out more about The Big Bang, Tomorrow’s Engineers and the wider work of EngineeringUK at www.engineeringuk.com
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Semta: Event Review
supports to encourage young talent to enter the manufacturing industry and create training schemes which develop appropriate skills. Dr Cable emphasised that additional focus should now be turned to the task of encouraging more women to take up industrial careers, stating that it was “embarrassing” that the UK had one of the lowest proportions of female engineers of any country in Europe.
Leading ladies
Jade Aspinall, MBDA, clasps her Apprentice of the Year trophy
Semta spectacular Female talent from MBDA dominated at the first Semta Skills Awards in February. Jane Gray reports.
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emta, the manufacturing sector skills council, held its first national awards ceremony at a glamorous gala dinner in London. Several hundred guests graced the ceremony with big names like Nigel Whitehead, MD BAE Systems; Juergen Maier, MD Siemens UK Industry; Iain Gray CBE, CEO of the Technology Strategy Board and many more present at the event. Business Secretary Vince Cable officially opened the event by running through a long list of initiatives that the government now
His words were somewhat prescient given that the first Semta Skills Awards were eventually defined by the confident triumph of female talent from missile manufacturer MBDA systems. Young women from MBDA won both the Apprentice of the Year and High Apprentice of the Year categories. The former prize went to Jade Aspinall, who among other achievements, helped to design a new module for the company’s national engineering apprentice scheme. Daniella Di Stazio was crowned Higher Apprentice of the Year thanks to her remarkable contributions to a supply chain transformation project at MBDA. “This role is not something that is normally offered to apprentices – it is part of a senior team I am working with – and I am really proud my manager selected me to fulfil this role,” she gushed. Other award categories at the Semta Skills awards recognised the commitments and
WORKFORCE & SKILLS
innovations of employers, large and small, to protecting the long term competitiveness of British Industry by investing in skills. Berthon Boats form Lymington, Hampshire won the prize for the most impressive SME investment in skills thanks to its willingness to support training for the greater good of industry. The company sponsors apprentice schemes at other local companies as well as for itself.
Hall of fame
In addition to revealing its main award winners Semta also used its first awards ceremony to invest the first modern day engineer into its Hall of Fame, a device designed to highlight current engineering prowess and change perceptions that the days of grandeur and leadership for British industry lie in the past. After months of vote gathering Semta revealed that 24-year-old Sam Etherington from Cumbria had been selected to sit alongside historical greats like Sir Frank Whittle and Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the Semta Hall of Fame. The young man is responsible for pioneering a revolutionary wave power generation system.
Mystery Machine
Another announcement at the Semta Skills Awards was the launch a new youth inspiration initiative called the Mystery Machine. “We don’t want to own this idea,” said Semta chairman Allan Cook CBE. “We want to share it with industry.” The online ideas generator is targeted at 13-18 year olds and challenges to help build a ‘mystery machine’ with 3,278 components and no assembly instructions. “We want to create a community of enthusiasm,” Mr Cook enthused after an impressive video pumped up audience excitement about the new scheme.
FURTHER READING: For a full list of Semta Skills Awards winners go to bit.ly/ SemtaSkillsAwards1
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 49
Industry 4.0
Manufacturing Leadership
Leaders unite! Jane Gray reports on a talk by German industrialist Professor Henning Kagermann on the origins and structure of Industry 4.0.
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or those who are unfamiliar with the term, Industrie 4.0 (hence Industry 4.0) is a term coined by German industrialists for a new vision for industrial competitiveness. It is based on the combination of certain industrial, communications and service technologies to offer high wage economies the power to be competitive, despite globalisation and the availability of cheap labour in emerging economies.
It includes several principles, none of which are revolutionary in their own right, but which together promise a new industrial paradigm – one that has social change and the improvement of living standards at its heart. Briefly, these principles include:
Individualisation or mass customisation: making very small batch sizes, potentially of one, at volume Flexibility and urbanisation of production Dynamic design of business and engineering processes Flexible workforce: allowing better work-life balance and indivualised work planning for employees Optimisation of aging workforce: via smart assistance systems Modular uptake and upgrade: existing infrastructure can be replaced gradually In the last year whisperings about the work being done in Germany to create a structured movement towards Industry 4.0 have grown significantly in the UK. The topic is now a frequent source of debate and aspiration in forward thinking industry forums like ’s Automation Advisory Board and at conferences like Automate UK in February. Professor Kagermann’s appearance at the Royal Academy of Engineering earlier in February was, therefore, a significant and popular event which drew in manufacturing leaders from GE, Jaguar Land Rover , MacAlloy, Rolls-Royce, Siemens and more. In a lecture titled Industrie 4.0 – what can the UK learn from Germany’s industrial strategy, prof Kagermann described the melting pot of circumstance and design which allowed Germany to create its concept for a fourth industrial revolution and take the lead in its realisation. He explained how the parallel findings of a high-tech strategy published in 2006, and of a new ICT industry summit triggered a chain reaction of research and structured collaboration between powerful industry leaders to define: the characteristics of a Smart factory; understand the impact of the Industry 4.0 vision on the ‘real environment’ and the economic environment; anticipate the way in which it will alter the human experience of manufacturing – both from a worker point of view and from the social perspective; and finally to explore the enabling technology factors. Professor Kagermann’s presentation posed an indirect question as to Britain’s readiness or capability to absorb Industry 4.0-type technologies in its industrial base, and the readiness of workers and wider society to accept them. As delegates dispersed there was talk of the need for more “collaboration for the greater good” between the heads of Britain’s industrial titan’s – like Siemens, Jaguar Land Rover and Rolls-Royce. We await news.
About Professor Kagermann Prof Kagermann is president of Germany’s National Academy of Science and Engineering and was formerly CEO of industry software giant SAP. He was a leading figure in the inception of Industry 4.0 and continues to be instrumental in its realisation. Read a longer version of this article at bit.ly/LeadersUniteIndustry4-0
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Event review
Manufacturing Leadership
UK and German industrialists gathered in Uttoxeter
Meet the Mittelstand
Can Britain ever hope to reproduce the mighty German Mittelstand? Should it be aiming to? A conference in January asked “was können wir von den Deutschen lernen?”
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ermany’s magnificent Mittelstand of small and medium sized companies makes up over half of Germany’s total economic output (52% in 2012). While other countries try to scale up their SMEs to a size that can reliably feed global OEMs like carmakers, Germany’s larger ‘Mittelstand’ firms have been doing it for years. Meet the Mittelstand, an event hosted at JCB’s Uttoxeter HQ in January sought to tease out some of the secrets of this German economic miracle. Some of the building blocks of Germany’s business infrastructure are familiar, others less so and several smack of common sense. GE Capital Germany’s Joachim Secker explained the three bank system in Germany, based on large national banks, Landesbanken and Sparkasssen. The latter provides more direct control over
loans to local SMEs, making appropriate finance for investments more accessible. Access to AAA grade research for manufacturing companies seems more accessible in Germany too. While time with the famous Fraunhofer Institute can be expensive – circa Eu1,500 per hour – its resources are extraordinary. Revenues of the Fraunhofer from industry are about Eu450 million, raised from 4,000 contracts, said ex-Fraunhofer IPA Prof. Engelbert Westkaemper. While many British universities receive funding from industry, Britain’s answer to the Fraunhofer – the Catapults– is capitalised with £300m over five years and while the industrial portion of the three-thirds funding model is rising, it is tiny compared to the Fraunhofer, which also has a 60-year head start. Presentations underlined several other truths about Germany’s industrial prowess – including the fact that
the proportion of manufacturing in Germany’s economy has shrunk in parity with that in Europe and Britain, but from a bigger starting point. As in Britain, this turned young people away from the sector. “Just before the financial crisis, the proportion of degree-educated engineers in German manufacturing employment was six per cent, an historic low,” said Prof. Westkaemper. “Due to the work of initiatives led by the Fraunhofer, that number is up to eighteen per cent.” Developing the skills debate, MAHLE’s global HR director Joachim Reichle emphasised how larger Mittelstand companies like his have to fight for talent with big local corporates – in his case BMW, Mercedes and more. However, when a Mittelstand company wins a recruit, Germany’s Vocational Training Law ensures confidence that, wherever they have been trained, they will meet universally recognised standards. Delegates at Meet the Mittelstand enviously listened to a description of the rigorous standards of the Handelskammer (HK) – Germany’s industrial Chamber of Commerce – which enshrines vocational training standards in national law. Anglophiles will say Germany’s system is far from perfect, some companies standing on a burning ship of succession. This was acknowledged in GSK Stockmann + Kollegen’s presentation which explored the challenges for family owned businesses that want to grow by acquisition, or demerger parts of the company. Furthermore, other comments by presenters showed that Germany’s industrial leaders are far from complacent about their status as the engine room of European manufacturing. But presentations touched on myriad projects to improve industrial competitiveness, including Manufuture (which has British involvement), SmartFactoryKL and Industry 4.0 (p50) Critically mid-sized companies such as Balluff and Zwick Roell are benefiting – albeit for a price. What can the UK take from this? FURTHER READING: For more conclusions from Meet the Mittelstand, go to: //bit.ly/ MeetMittelstand March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 51
Smart factories
Manufacturing Technologies
Achtung bitte: The smart factory is coming What will the factory of the future look like? By devising and promoting Industry 4.0, Germany’s automation sector wants to show the world it is the leader in creating the smart factories of the future.
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or readers who are unaware that manufacturing was part of a third industrial revolution, brace yourselves. We have entered the fourth industrial revolution. Technology journalists assembled in Berlin on February 11 for a preview of Hannover Messe 2014. Keen to hear what Germany, a world leader in industrial automation technology and embedded systems, has to say about the future of manufacturing, we were engulfed in a tsunami of technotalk about integrated industry, smart factories, cyber-physical systems, and artificial intelligence. The fourth industrial revolution is about the use of cyber-physical systems. These technologies bring the virtual and physical worlds together to
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create a fully networked world where intelligent objects communicate and interact with each other. This integrated world in a factory will enable more efficient production, correct defects, reduce shop floor labour and better synchronise factory activity with material delivery and logistics. Imagine a production machine that uses air pressure to measure standardized product flow. The feedback mechanism tells the machine’s CNC controller that the process was not optimized during one run and, between these readings, defects are possible. The same information is communicated to the company EPS system automatically and recorded. It is then transmitted to a factory management app on the operations directors’ smart phone. But in addition to better intrasystem communications, technology being developed by partners of Industry 4.0 – the name given by the German government to the technology strategy for the factory of the future – will self-correct machine settings that cause these variances, eliminating faults, waste and sub-optimal energy usage with no human intervention. Industry 4.0 will be where the “internet of things” meets the “internet of services” and ICT is the engine for modifying production to meet demand.
“2014 will see a great shift towards automation in industrial manufacturing and the transformation of the world’s energy systems,” said Dr. Jochen Köckler, a member of the Managing Board of Deutsche Messe. “To remain competitive, companies need to make their manufacturing processes more efficient, and that means greater investment in the latest automation technology.” This may sound like a thinly-veiled ploy to get manufacturers to buy more of their member companies’ equipment, but Industry 4.0 has the endorsement of the German Federal Government. It sits under the government’s High-Tech Strategy 2020 Action Plan, launched in 2012, and within a 40-strong collaborative programme, the National Roadmap for Embedded Systems. The roadmap alone will spend more than Eu2.5 billion in six research areas over the 10-year project lifetime and Industry 4.0 itself has been allocated up to Eu200 million within High Tech Strategy 2020. The gravitas of Industry 4.0’s partners suggest it is much more important than a big marketing scheme. The National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), the Fraunhofer Institute, Intelligent Technical Systems OstWestfalenLippe, Bosch, Festo, Harting and SAP are just some of the big companies involved in Industry 4.0 from the outset. But is all this techno-talk relevant to UK manufacturing, itself entering a period of investment in established manufacturing technology? Ken Young is technical director of the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Ansty. “We are working on Industry 4.0 as we see it as crucial to any manufacturing industry going forward,” he says. “We are already engaged with the EU to look at how it can be funded and a number of our partner companies are also keen to engage with us on it.”
FURTHER READING: Go to themanufacturer.com for interviews with automation companies Beckhoff, Festo, Harting and Weidmuller on their involvement in Industry 4.0
FREE to attend for subscribers of The Manufacturer
See website for more details.
From shop floor to boardroom, health and safety is critical to a company’s success
HEALTH AND SAFETY
29th April, 2014 Ambassadors Bloomsbury, London
This conference is an expansion on health and safety recognition. It gives an opportunity to explore how you can change your thought process regarding health and safety and expand on your compliance to improve bottom line profitability to protect your business reputation. The conference will show attendees why health and safety should be a board room priority and the importance of including health and safety in your corporate strategy.
Hear from expert speakers including: Carolyn Issitt, Head of Membership Development, IOSH
Joscelyne Shaw, Head of Policy, British Safety Council Sponsored by:
Richard Evans, Managing Director, Mechatronic
Researched and developed by:
Richard Eastwood, Facilities and Security Manager, UTC Aerospace
www.themanufacturer.com/healthandsafety2014 /healthandsafety2014 @TheManufacturer
#TMHealthandSafety
Callum Bentley explores two new textile technologies breaking new ground in 3D printing and intelligent materials.
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ere’s a thought. Imagine walking into your department store or fashion retailer of choice on the hunt for a new pair of jeans. Avoiding the clamouring masses fighting over the last pair of said casual trousers in their size, you calmly meander to a computer terminal, enter a few details and read the latest news on your smart phone before a store clerk brings you a pair of fresh jeans. They’ve been made to your exact measurements in a few minutes on a bespoke 3D printer. You already know they fit, so there’s no need to line up for a fitting room.
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Sounds good, doesn’t it? While this kind of euphoric shopping experience isn’t available yet, textile manufacturers around the UK are in the process of making it a reality. Speaking proudly to about his product from a phone line in Israel, Shai Etzion, vice president of business development at Manchester-based textile manufacturer Tamicare explains how his company developed a new textile material and manufacturing process while trying to develop a disposable women’s hygiene product about 10 years ago. He says Tamicare set up shop in Manchester to try and partner with other
textile manufacturers which it could rely on to offer solutions in manufacturing its product – Cosyflex, a new non-woven fabric. While the partnerships did not come to pass, in the end the venture turned into something far more ambitious. “It turned out [the local manufacturers] could not offer us the right solutions, so we ended up having to source our own tooling machines so we could make Cosyflex to our own specs,” Mr Etzion said. “For this specific product we used natural materials like latex and cotton because it would need to be a disposable product and would have to be sustainable. “So the original manufacturing of the Cosyflex material was based on those polymers. It turns out that when we were looking for a specific solution for the product we came up with an entirely new manufacturing process.” What Tamicare developed was a process in which textile fibres including cotton and latex are sprayed as a liquid onto a template where they set before being removed and finished. The entire process takes minutes, is completely automated and, due to the fact that there is no cutting or stitching, there is no waste. “We made this technology with a specific disposable hygiene product in mind, but it turned out that we had created something much bigger,” Etzion
Textiles technology
Manufacturing Technologies
We have a device here that protects a person when they fall over, but which we can take one step further by logging data about their activity to reveal where and why they are falling Daniel Plant Founder, Armourgel
recalls. “With Cosyflex you can build numerous products.” Tamicare’s technology and its Cosyflex product has drawn massive consumer interest, with global companies such as Victoria’s Secret entering into talks for a supply contract. Etzion also says the company is developing products such as compression bandages for customers in the healthcare sector and is even extending into the automotive market. “We have a lot of interest from the automotive industry where we are developing fabrics for places like under the hood, and it shows that we have a significant advantage over the textiles they use today,” he said. “The main advantage is our minimal waste of material,” he sums up. Another area Cosyflex is aiming to forge its way into is the sporting goods market. With a huge growth in compression garments, it’s not difficult to see how this product and technology could make an impact on the sports clothing industry. However, there is another technologydriven textile manufacturer that is making waves in this area. Daniel Plant is the creator of Armourgel, a protective textile that can be woven into existing garments to help protect against falls and abrasions. The smart material is made of polymers which are extremely strainrate sensitive. What this means is that the polymers inside the fabric are soft when a low strain rate is applied, however when higher speeds or impacts are applied, it becomes more rigid. “The material itself is actually active,” says Mr Plant, who also works
as a researcher in the mechanical engineering department of London’s Imperial College. “It has a special geometry, which we call a re-entrance geometry, and materials with this geometry are auxetic. This basically means that, whereas when you stretch a regular material it gets thinner, when you stretch an auxetic material it actually gets fatter.” What this means for customers is that if you were to say, come off your mountain bike while travelling at ludicrous speeds, your chances of surviving the crash, or at least suffering far fewer broken bones, is far greater. Or for the more domestic use, if your elderly mother was to slip and fall, the chances of her breaking her hip would be significantly reduced. It is the latter of these examples that inspired the creation of Armourgel and has drawn considerable interest from the healthcare sector. However the application of this revolutionary product to a range of uses, including workplace health and safety garments, is evident. Mr Plant says he has already worked on products where Armourgel’s auxetic material is applied to 3D printed vests to create energy absorbing products but the entrepreneur and engineer has bigger ambitions for his material. Plant aims to have a wearable garment made entirely from Armourgel that can collect data about a fall and report it for analysis using technology being developed and tested in the startup’s labs. The data could be used to help prevent similar falls and accidents happening again. “We have the technology to measure the force of the fall, the location, when
Cosyflex specs One pair of disposable underpants can be created in less than three seconds using spray nozzle printing Superfast printing gives Tamicare the capacity to print up to 10 million pairs of knickers a year Increased demand saw the company move to a new, larger 1800 sq m facility last year
RAEng support Daniel Plant was recently awarded funding towards the further development of Armourgel via a Royal Academy of Engineering fellowship scheme. Mr Plant was one of eight researchers to receive up to £85,000 to help turn their technological innovations into successful spin-off businesses.
the fall or impact occurred and report that back. “I think that kind of information in a healthcare system is extremely important. It’s not just the airbag approach where they go off to protect you only when they need to,” Plant enthuses. “We have a device here that protects the person when they fall over, but which we can take one step further by logging data about their activity to reveal where and why they are falling. In a nursing home for example, you can then work on compliance for specific areas of the facility.” The Armourgel technology could have massive financial repercussions considering the NHS spends more than £1.73 billion annually on beds and hospital care for elderly patients affected by hip injuries. FURTHER READING: Watch the video of Armourgel in action and Cosyflex garments being made at bit.ly/1bkFS4y.
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Automation for competitiveness
Manufacturing Technologies
N
or Die!
Grant Collier, head of marketing, the British Automation and Robot Association takes an honest look at the UK’s remaining industrial weaknesses while others revel in its new found strengths.
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ow is a good time to be involved in manufacturing in the UK. Not only are we seeing growth but confidence throughout industry. But in the battle to constantly compete in globalised markets, it is essential that we address weaknesses in our industrial base as well as celebrating strengths. So far, UK growth has been partly internally driven and assisted by positive rhetoric, and increasing action, from HM government. UK manufacturers have a track record of competitively innovating for both product and process development. They have made strides in the application of lean engineering for efficiency However, a poor track record on investment in capital equipment, especially industrial automation technologies, is could really hamstring us. The UK is well behind other competing manufacturing nations in Europe and, alarmingly, far slower to adopt automation than developing economies such as China that have embraced it with alacrity.
Automation for flexibility
Robots are only one form of automation – there are many more – but they offer one of the most obvious examples of the way in which automation can be highly flexible and relevant to all - even companies with relatively small production runs and the need for frequent, quick product changes.
Increasing numbers of manufacturers are opening their eyes to the versatility of robot technology. It is encouraging that robot installations in the UK in 2012 achieved a record of 2,477 units, up 98% on 2011, with a similar volume of 2305 units sold in 2013. The bulk of sales have been to the automotive industry with only modest growth in other sectors such as food and pharmaceuticals. There is tremendous interest from the UK food industry in automation – but often constrained by the multiple retailers’ non-existent or short contracts which create uncertainty and reticence to automate. Grant Collier from the British Automation and Robot Association has urged companies to visit the PPMA Show, September 30 to October 2 at the NEC to see automation in action and listen to the Groceries Code Adjudicator explain how she will effectively help unblock the food supply chain with regard to automation with new legislation. The message is simple, if UK companies wish to remain competitive they need to automate. It is similar to the advent of computing in the early 1970’s. Where would we be now if the UK had not adopted this technology and everyone else had? It is the same with robotics and automation. If you wish to survive in a global market place then automate, the payback period and cost is far less than people imagine.
Automation Case Study
Manufacturing Technologies
About Lombard Lombard is the largest asset financer provider in the UK and was voted Best Leasing & Asset Finance Provider by Business Moneyfacts for five consecutive years from 2009 to 2013. Lombard can provide a range of finance options for SMEs and large multi-national firms. Products include hire purchase, finance lease, operating lease and sale and leaseback. There are also green energy products available and specialist facilities for agriculture and technology products. Security may be required and product fees may apply. Find out more at www.lombard.co.uk
Neck on the line How neckings manufacturer GBV Engineering preserved its UK presence and increased global competitiveness with automation investment.
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BV Engineering specialises in manufacturing neckrings which are used by glassworks to produce the top of bottles. A family-run business established by Vic Cowlishaw and his wife Patricia in 1985, GBV Engineering is the only company in Great Britain to manufacture this product. In recent years sourcing skilled staff had proved to be a great challenge for the business and even though GBV Engineering has invested time and
This investment will make us more competitive and safeguard the company’s future Vic Cowlishaw
money into apprentices, the trainees had not stayed with the business. With an aging workforce, Vic was unable to replace staff who were retiring. To safeguard the company’s future, Vic needed a reliable operation and decided to invest in a fully automated production line.
Robots to the rescue
The company already owned two loading robots which operate CNC machines but there was a need to extend the fleet to increase capacity, stabilise growth and strengthen GBV’s position among its competitors. The Cowlishaws have worked with Lombard since the inception of GBV and so the decision to seek asset finance from the same source was easy to make. He turned to the asset finance provider to secure Hire Purchase facilities. Vic used this to invest in four robots and a CNC machine. The robots are now used to load components onto the CNC machines;
previously this process would have been done by an employee, as would random spot checks of the finished products. Now every single finished item is checked robotically reducing the risk of error. With an automated process if any faults are detected, production comes to a halt automatically. Vic is alerted and can amend the error remotely before restarting production. . The automation of this process, which is capable of running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, has cut production time by 60% and doubled output. Capacity has therefore also increased and GBV is able to seek new contracts. Furthermore, GBV can offer a more competitive price when tendering for those contracts since automation has made production more cost effective. Vic comments, “Although GBV Engineering is the only company of its kind in Britain there are many competitors in the market globally and we only service about 20% of the UK market. “This investment will make us more competitive and safeguard the company’s future, without the need to rely on the dwindling number of skilled workers in our industry,” Vic summed up. “In addition, safeguarding our business will keep neckring manufacturing alive in Britain.” March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 57
Automation for automotive
Manufacturing Technologies
Join the race
scale production that the UK can offer a viable, nay competitive, location for the mass-production of cars for the first time buyer and the family.
Respond to opportunity
Martin Walder, Rockwell Automation talks about the need for lateral thinking to support a resurgent UK car industry
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he UK is a great place to build a car again. But it’s not long since, even car companies still making in the UK, would have snorted doubtfully such a claim. The UK has long been associated with the high precision engineering of motorsport and the high quality finishes of some of the most luxurious hand-built cars on the planet. But, for a while, it became commercially more sensible to build mass-produced cars in cheaper labour economies.
In 2014 a car is made in the UK every 20 seconds
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Roll with the good times
Yet now we are in a position where, according to The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), 2014 will see the UK rise to the third biggest car manufacturer in Europe behind only Germany and Spain, with a car rolling off a UK line every 20 seconds or so. This has been achieved with a number of factors working in concert. Advanced automation is at the heart of it all with the rejuvenation of classic emotive marques such as Jaguar and Land Rover also playing an important part. But it’s not just about the top end motors that are being made in the UK and selling well around the world and this is very encouraging for the future of the automotive industry here in the UK. More accessible models are also being made in the UK by Nissan and Toyota, among others. These companies have sent a signal to the world of large
Rockwell Automation recently worked with Toyota at its plant in Burnaston, Derbyshire on the refurbishment of AGVs that serviced the presses at the beginning of the production line. It’s a great example of how the attitudes and capabilities of the UK automotive industry have changed. Originally classified as a refurbishment, a sudden change in manufacturing priorities due to the introduction of the new Auris and Avensis models, immediately elevated the project to a critical level. However, a relatively short window of opportunity to complete the work – just two weeks summer closure of the factory – put pressure on to achieve the necessary improvements to efficiency and flexibility. Some lateral thinking by Rockwell Automation Solution Partner, AND Automation, coupled to Toyota’s willingness to entertain alternative technologies, quickly solved the problem. Today, a Rockwell Automation-based solution which answers the immediate needs of the factory is in place. And furthermore, the solution offers a simple and effective upgrade path to accommodate the potential for further capability in the future. Needless to say – the benefits to the UK economy of a strong automotive industry go beyond the increased exports and balance sheets of the manufacturers. The success of every OEM manufacturing in the UK relies on a capable supply chain and this offers massive opportunity to UK automotive suppliers to respond competitively to OEM needs. Making high quality car requires high quality components, skills and valueadd services. The resurgence of UK automotive should lead to stronger supporting industries and job creation, not to mention a real force for economic rebalance. But the local supply chain must be ready to make the manufacturing and business innovations necessary if it wants a share of the prize. www.rockwellautomation.com
Robots for food and drink
Manufacturing Technologies
About Stäubli: Textile machinery, connectors and robotics Stäubli is a mechatronics solution provider with three dedicated divisions: textile machinery, connectors and robotics. Employing more than 4,000 people, Stäubli is an international group based in Pfäffikon, Switzerland with offices in 25 countries and agency representation in 50 more. www.staubli.com
The big advantage of the Stäubli range is that the SCARA models in the TS series, as well as the articulated kinematics of the TX and RX series, are already suitable for cleanroom environments in their standard form
Foodies
and vegetables, filling jars or tins, dispensing, cutting, handling, labeling, packaging and palletizing. In short, whatever the product or process might be, Stäubli has a robot to offer. Furthermore, once the appropriate robot model has been selected, customers can choose to opt, either for a standard design, or for one of the many variants available to suit the prevailing hygiene requirements.
Stäubli Robotics was an early entrant into the market supplying robots to the food industry and its range of SCARA and sixaxis kinematics is now popular for a wide range of food Fit for you These special designs include manufacturing applications. cleanroom, super cleanroom, foodHere’s why. grade oil and easy-to-clean HE variants.
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or many years, Stäubli robots have served as a benchmark for operations in which, not only the speed and precision of the robot are considered crucial, but also factors such as particle emission, easy-to-clean surfaces and uninterrupted availability. Typical food applications for Stäubli robots are diverse. The company has installed solutions for baking, pastry making, confectionery, meat and fish, dairy products, frozen foods, fruits
The big advantage of the Stäubli range is that the SCARA models in the TS series, as well as the articulated kinematics of the TX and RX series, are already suitable for cleanroom environments in their standard form. The speedy SCARAs of the TS series, comply with cleanroom class 6 (ISO 14644-1) standards and these precision machines score excellent marks for their repeatability
of ±0.01mm. They are ideally suited for a variety of applications in the food industry. Stäubli’s six-axis robots of the TX and RX series, have taken cleanroom compatibility to a new level by virtue of their fully encapsulated design with internal cabling and integrated drive technology. This makes them easy to clean, and even the standard model complies with cleanroom class ISO 5.
Meeting the highest standards
Stäubli’s HE versions of the six-axis TX series, which are suitable for payloads up to 130 kg, are particularly popular with food manufactures with extra rigorous health and safety requirements for production in humid environments. Stäubli Humid Environments (HE) robots are specially modified for use in damp areas or where they are constantly being sprayed with water. They are ideal for applications subject to ultra-stringent hygiene standards. This range of robots have a strong track record in withstanding cleaning processes that may have to be repeated several times per day. Such a punishing regime would damage conventional robots.
New horizons
Stäubli’s series of advanced robots are opening up completely new horizons in the food industry, taking on difficult and unpopular tasks, and achieving the highest hygiene standards in the sector.
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Automation Case Study
Manufacturing Technologies
Plastics specialist cuts costs with ABB robots To meet cost targets and maintain quality standards across its three sites in Ireland, Czech Republic and South Carolina, USA, plastic parts supplier Mergon International relies on 37 industrial robots from ABB.
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he robots, installed over the last two years, are used for cutting, drilling and assembling moulded parts, offering accurate, repeatable performance. But these are not the first; the company has been operating ABB robots for the past 15 years. “We selected ABB based on the quality of the hardware and because the company offers local support as well as global availability,” says Aisling Nolan, general manager of Mergon International. For the same reasons, the company also selected AC and DC drives from ABB for running extruders on its blow moulding machines. The equipment at the Irish plant, where 23 of the robots are installed, was supplied and integrated by Robotics and Drives of Ireland, ABB Robotics’ official Authorized Value Provider (AVP). Mergon International manufactures technical plastic mouldings for the automotive, industrial and healthcare sectors. “Using robots allows us to be competitive. Without automating our processes we simply could not compete in the marketplace. We almost always seek
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to automate processes if it makes commercial sense and ABB is a great partner in this respect,” says Nolan.
Meeting Mergon’s needs
When installing robots, Mergon looks for payback within one year, something that generally is achieved. The robots enable high plant utilisation with the maximum possible processing in an unbroken chain. Mouldings are received from the machines, excess material removed and moulding flash ground off before the parts are placed on a pallet in a set pattern designed to facilitate the next operation. With the use of robots, the manufacturing steps are linked together, cutting total cycle time and reducing the amount of capital tied up. Mergon operates three ranges of ABB robots. These are selected depending on the application, the
payload and the reach required. The company uses 18 ABB robots from the 6000 series, the most accurate and rigid robot in its class. This features a well-proven design that, together with a minimum of maintenance, ensures high production up-time. Advanced motion control and collision detection reduce the risk of tool and work piece damage. The control system ensures the robot always optimises acceleration and retardation to actual load, path accuracy and position repeatability, resulting in the shortest cycle time possible. The company also uses 17 ABB robots from the 4000 series, which features compact robots with exceptional all-round capabilities and stiffness, making them perfectly matched for variety of applications where accuracy, speed rigidity and flexibility are important. The robot features fast acceleration and top speed, which gives short cycle times. It is also very accurate, which helps ensure consistent parts quality. In addition, the company uses two ABB IRB 140, small, powerful and fast 6-axes robots, in cleanroom applications. Mergon International is an innovator in technical plastic moulding solutions for the automotive, industrial and healthcare sectors, using the latest materials and technologies to design, manufacture and test plastic components to ensure they meet the most demanding requirements.
Automation Case Study
Manufacturing Technologies
movements for each axis and the S120 servo controllers were connected to each motor using Drive CLIQ technology. This provided optimised plug and play diagnostic capabilities.
Early stage planning
The software design was developed and submitted at an early stage of the project, along with sample code and timing plans for the new control system implementation. The modular software design allowed for straightforward system configuration, ease of navigation and
With the solution provided, all control aspects of the brake pad machining and assembly production have been tackled Brian Murphy, Orwin
Taking total control How automation and special purpose machine builder Orwin achieved improved production flexibility without compromising on quality.
T
he drive behind Tyne and Wearbased Orwin’s need to improve flexibility came directly from its own customer-base. A key client in the food and drink manufacturing sector showed increasing expectations for Orwin to help them keep pace with the demands for flexibility, responsiveness and quality which are pre-requisites for their industry. Rising to the challenge, Orwin sought assistance
from Siemens and its solution partner, Cleveland Systems. With this duo, the specialist machine builder found common assumptions that increased flexibility would negatively impact on quality dropped away. Siemens Totally Integrated Automation (TIA) offering, which promises integrated control of automated systems, is largely to thank for this. Tam Ashcroft, director at Cleveland Systems explains: “To improve system and manufacturing flexibility for the end customer’s 18 axis brake pad machining and assembly line capability, which Orwin was developing, we looked at the design and commissioning of the automated control system software. “Siemens Sinamics S7-300 PLC, S120 18 Axis servo controllers, Profibus distributed links and the MP277 10” touch screen HMIs were judged as an integrated and proven answer for the machine’s control functionality.” The reconfiguration entailed the connection of the S7-300 PLC to the S120 drives via Profibus DP. Standard Siemens telegrams were configured to achieve cyclic data transfer, giving full PLC control and monitoring of each drive, including the transfer each way of parameters and data sets. Traversing block control philosophy was used, giving 64 pre-defined
future maintenance. This complemented the TIA approach and allowed for accelerated commissioning of communications between the drives, PLC and HMI devices. Brian Murphy from Orwin summarises the operational benefits: “With the solution provided, all control aspects of the brake pad machining and assembly production have been tackled.” As a result, Mr Murphy claims Orwin’s end user has seen significant improvements in terms of reliability, repeatability, clearer diagnostics information, production flexibility and overall efficiencies for the brake pad machining production. John Inskip from Siemens Industry adds: “The system now has easily navigable software supported by the communication intelligence that sits behind the Siemens’ TIA approach. “In areas such as recipe controls, the machine operators can simply adjust the parameters over the HMI, and together with the traversing block movements that are also editable from the S7-300 PLC, it now provides the end user with a high level of production control and flexibility.” Orwin’s Murphy concludes: “Siemens TIA has provided a complete automation control solution. It is delivering tangible benefits for our customer, allowing it to respond to changing market needs.” March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 61
Palletising Robots
Manufacturing Technologies
: Machine availability and OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) are important to production professional. How do the latest palletising robots score here? Essentially this comes down to reliability and efficiency. Found on all palletisers is the balancer, often known as the shock absorber, and due to harsh wear and tear is often the first part to fail – which is why we eliminated it from the design of the M410iC/185. In addition, the life of the services to the gripper is lengthened, by running the cables and hoses down the 56mm diameter hollow wrist of the robot. Not only is there less interference between the cables/hoses and peripheral equipment, the housing protects the cables resulting in is less wear and tear on the wires.
Stacking up value : Where is innovation in palletising robots focused – at the high, mid or low volume end of manufacturing? High speed, large volume operators tend to drive manufacturing technology, so it follows that most major innovation is conceived primarily to meet the needs of these manufacturers. As an example, Fanuc has just launched a new generation universal palletising robot for high volume, high
Robot designers have massively de-skilled robot control in recent years
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Darren Whittall, technical manager, Fanuc Robotics, gives some snappy answers to questions on current trends in palletising robots. speed production. It is called the M410iC/185, and we’re anticipating strong demand from the high volume end of the market owing to the robot’s high payload, inherent reliability and ability to stack pallets as high as 2.4m. : What kinds of speeds can be achieved by the latest palletising robots? The M410iC/185 has set a new benchmark for speed. It is capable of 1,700 standard palletising cycles per hour, making it the fastest robot in its class. This represents a 13 per cent increase in throughput versus its predecessor. Even more impressive is that it can achieve these speeds when handling payloads of up to 185kg.
: In the past, robots were criticised for being difficult to use and control. Is this still the case? No. Robot designers have massively de-skilled robot control in recent years. Features like touchscreen pendant displays with 4D graphics give operators a user-friendly tool for viewing process information including cell layout and status, as well as providing the capability to act as the system HMI. : Are space constraints still an issue for many UK manufacturers? Floor space is always at a premium in manufacturing facilities. But the newest robots on the market often have ultracompact footprints. The M410iC/185’s is just 610 x 806mm. It also features Dual Check Safety (DSC) and Speed & Position Check software, which allow the robot to be restrained to precisely the area in which it works, something that usually has to be done externally using limit switches. : How is the use of robots changing in UK manufacturing companies? Manufacturers are realising how flexible robots can be. Robots with extended reach and stack height capability can create a large work envelope. In conjunction with highspeed operation this allows a single robot to service multiple lines in high volume environments.
Simulation
Ansys ups the ante
IT in Manufacturing
CFD modelling the flow through the valve simultaneously plotting the stress field from an FEA calculation
James Pozzi gives an overview of the 15.0 update from simulation company Ansys.
I
n the increasingly competitive engineering simulation market, Ansys upped the ante at the end of 2013 with the release of its 15.0 software update. Looking to steal a march on industry rivals, its latest engineering tool program comes with a raft of updates and has been billed by the US company as its most complete package to date. Naturally, excitement abounds. Is this excitement justified? Let’s take a look at what the 15.0 version features.
focus on the pre-processing, structural, fluid, and electromagnetic simulation capabilities. And wide ranging these capabilities are. In terms of structural analysis, there is an improved focus on modelling composites, unsurprising given Ansys’ September 2013 acquisition of Swiss composite specialist EVEN, one of two recent acquisitions which also included chemistry simulation experts Reaction Design.
Time savings
A fluid forwards movement
There’s been a bid reduce the time engineers spend setting up analysis, allowing for more value-add time studying their simulation results. At a recent 15.0 overview at one of Ansys’ UK sites in Sheffield, the details of this efficiency drive were laid bare in a live demonstration. Building on last year’s 14.5 update, the core improvements of its successor
Core improvements focus on the pre-processing, structural, fluid, and electromagnetic simulation capabilities
With an increase in the use of composite materials across industry, often for improved fuel efficiency through weight reduction in the automotive sector, the emphasis on working faster in a complex material, while understanding of its qualities is still relatively nascent, is an intriguing proposition. Fluid enhancements in Ansys 15.0 include upgraded reliability for turbomachinery flow paths. This comprises time-varying pressure load simulations within a forced response, allowing the simulation to then be used in Ansys’ mechanical analysis software for further development. Other fluid related improvements include aero-elastic damping calculations, an improved adjoint optimisation solver able to handle significantly larger problems, multi-layer shell conduction and many multiphase model improvements such as for
simulating sprays, free surface motion and film formation. Ansys 15.0 also includes electromagnetic improvements such as specialised meshing for silicon substrates, printed boards, and redistribution layers. With the improved meshing, some 27 times faster than before, Ansys boldly claims that designers will no longer need to rely on specialist and design rules to validate certain simulations.
Embedding capability
Reflecting wider industries’ lust for automation and embedded technology, there is the capability of embedding mechanical control code using the SCADE Suite. This allows users to improve the communication between their software and hardware before they get to the plant floor, another illustration of the remote, HPC scalability Ansys champions. Under the guise of ‘game changing’ optimisation, more models can be run and result in an 89% efficiency increase. Following a year which saw revenues rise after what the company called “a period of volatility,” as well as the appointment of 20-year Microsoft veteran Walid Abu-Habda as its chief product officer, 2014 promises the be an interesting time for a company thinking on a grand scale. With a more varied and faster software complimented by an increasingly mobile product available to its growing customer base, momentum is very much with it. March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 63
In its element Investigating the implementation and benefits realisation process for a new CRM platform at synthetic diamond manufacturer Element Six.
P
aul Williams, head of group information management at Element Six has four rules for IT:
1. Anything we do should increase revenue or profit 2. If we can’t, then we should control costs so that savings can be used on new initiatives that will increase revenue or profit 3. Get out of people’s way; make life easier for people so that they can spend more time on activities that cut cost and increase revenue 4. Stop paying for the past and pay for the future
Moving to Dynamics CRM is saving us in the region of £70,000 per year, based on the 220 users we currently have Paul Williams, Head of Group Information Management, Element Six
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These four rules are why Mr Williams made the decision to migrate from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and why he got in touch with Zero2Ten. Williams firmly believes that the role of IT is to help the business provide both uncompromising service to customers and value for money. “Every dollar IT spends, our sales team has to earn, so we don’t spend lightly,” he says. While Salesforce.com offered a lot of functionality, it wasn’t being fully used by Element Six employees. It was also taking the entire CRM [Customer Relationship Management] budget just to maintain the system. “We weren’t really taking advantage of the platform,” comments Williams. “We were spending all of our money just to stand still.” “We could do requirements capture for new functionality and new features but we never had the resources to do anything with it,” he adds.
Making savings for re-investment
When Williams raised this with the leadership team, executives were clear that they were happy with the amount of money being spent on CRM. This opened up the opportunity to move to a cheaper platform and re-invest the savings in customer facing initiatives and workflow improvements. “Moving to Dynamics CRM is saving us in the region of £70,000 per year, based on the 220 users we currently have,” Williams shares. “That’s a lot of money to put back into improving customer service and delivering more value.” For Williams, the new platform needed to integrate with core business applications, including the JD Edwards ERP system. And it had to be easy to use. “If people can’t use the system, it won’t add value,” he comments. “Look and feel plays a big part. “You have to give people tools that they are familiar with and that they will want to use. Along with the lower cost, Dynamics CRM’s integration with Outlook and the familiar Office style played a big part in our decision.”
Customer Relationship Management
You have to give people tools that they are familiar with and that they will want to use. Along with the lower cost, Dynamics CRM’s integration with Outlook and the familiar Office style played a big part in our decision Paul Williams Head of Group Information Management, Element Six
Because Dynamics CRM is built on a core framework, Williams says he was confident he could do more with it to extend value across the business.
Contract countdown
With the platform decision made, Williams had only four months to migrate across before his Salesforce.com contract expired. “I had worked with Zero2Ten before and knew instinctively that they could work to our tight timescales,” Williams recalls. “I like their fixed price approach; they tell you what they are going to do and they deliver it.” Williams compared a time and materials quote from an alternative supplier with the fixed price quote from Zero2Ten and found that by choosing to work with the latter, Element Six would save £19,000 on the implementation cost alone.
There were no problems at all with migration and integration. It fact it went so smoothly that I wondered if people were actually using it. Zero2Ten really do know Dynamics CRM inside out Paul Williams Head of Group Information Management, Element Six
Zero2Ten was able to meet Element Six’s timescales and budget using its remote migration and implementation services. Working to a defined process, technical teams built the basic system model in parallel with preparation for data migration. This meant that the Salesforce.com data could be migrated and surfaced directly into the actual system. “Considering our project manager and Zero2Ten were working remotely, the whole process was incredibly smooth,” says Williams. “There were no problems at all with migration and integration. It fact it went so smoothly that I wondered if people were actually using it. Zero2Ten really do know Dynamics CRM inside out,” Williams confides.
Ensuring user adoption
Zero2Ten runs a 12 month Adopt2Win programme, included in the fixed fee, which helps support user adoption of Dynamics CRM during and after implementation. The Adopt2Win programme provides a framework for measuring the sustainability of ROI. “I can see that I’m keeping my promise of getting out of users’ way and maximising the value from each licence,” says Williams. “I can see what activities people are logging and even see where managers are using the system for reporting or following updates. “With Saleforce.com, we had too many systems that weren’t integrated. Users would have to log onto their machines and then log into Salesforce. com,” Williams recalls. “Just that one hurdle meant people were reluctant to use it.” The lack of adoption with Salesforce.com meant that the cost per activity was very high for Element Six – as well as the fundamental system costs being higher too. “With Dynamics CRM, people just launch email and they have CRM right there. I can see people using the system and they’re using it for doing more things, like forecasting, that add value to the business,” Williams sums up.
IT in Manufacturing
vision is to use the framework as a basis for enhancing customer service and overall performance. “Everyone should have an opportunity to interact with CRM in a way that touches what they do for the company,” he says. Williams has plans for the use of Dynamics CRM at Element Six’s new Global Innovation Centre near Oxford. “I’d love it if when a customer requests a sample, the innovation team responsible for that product can see what the customer is doing with it and be able to contact the customer. They will be able to ask for feedback and make sure that we are ultimately delivering the highest performing products,” Williams explains. “We are also looking at how Dynamics CRM integrates with other Microsoft software, including SharePoint. We don’t just see technology layers; we see how it all fits together to deliver a service,” he states. “We don’t think about what we can implement; we think about what we as a business want to do and then we pick IT systems to match our strategic business objectives. “Zero2Ten got us up and running with Dynamics CRM in remarkably short timescales. We have a roadmap for future development and with the additional knowledge transfer that Zero2Ten provides, we’re in great shape to take even more advantage of the platform,” Williams concludes.
The future
Dynamics CRM is now being used in all of Element Six’s business functions across more than 20 sites. Williams’ March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 65
Workforce Management Systems
IT in Manufacturing
Conserving time and money
U
ntil recently, Wilkin & Sons, like many manufacturing SMEs, was using a spreadsheet-based system to record time and attendance for staff. With continued company growth however, the company management recognised that this approach had become outdated. It made it hard to record and review meaningful data on attendance and employee absence. It therefore also made it very difficult to use time and
About Wilkin & Sons Wilkin and Sons has been in existence and in Tiptree for 126 years, predominantly manufacturing jams and marmalades. Over the years other products have gradually been added to a growing and diversifying range. The factory has several manufacturing lines, from the larger 340gm and 454gm jars through to the miniature jars often found on hotel breakfast tables. The site includes around 700 acres of farmland used for growing strawberries and other soft fruits, as well as an organic plum orchard. About 70% of output is for the UK market and the rest is exported to around 65 countries all over the world. Customers include the major supermarkets as well as prestigious names such as British Airways First Class, the Orient Express and the Queen Mary II. After years of steady growth, the company’s management found that, with around 370 employees, the administration had outgrown its rudimentary time and attendance and workforce management systems. Find out more about Wilkin & Sons at www.tiptree.com
66 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
How jam and conserve manufacturer Wilkin & Sons made attendance management its bread and butter through implementing a Crown Computing time and attendance system. attendance information to leverage even greater productivity. Search for a more modern and capable system, Wilkin & Sons approached Crown Computing and quickly identified its Open Options™ system as a suitable solution. Stephen Cook, Wilkin & Sons’ HR Manager explains the system selection process in more detail: “We invited a number of companies in to pitch for the contract, to show us their workforce management systems, after giving them a briefing of our requirements,” he says. “Crown beat off some stiff competition,” Mr Cook continues, but in the end it was Crown’s commitment to building a lasting relationship with Wilkin & Sons, as well as the solution’s capabilities, that shone through. “They took a lot of time getting to know us and what we wanted by showing they understood our business and what we needed. The functionality of the system and also the technical ability were superior to the other systems we saw,” Cook sums up. Why was Crown’s approach to relationship building so important? Cook explains: “It was obvious from Crown’s capability and knowledge of workflow cycles that we were able to build a meaningful and flexible relationship that enabled us to meet our business needs.” Once the project was underway, his original opinions were confirmed: “The training was second to none. We went to Tamworth for two days, then during the go-live phase we had two days
on-site consultancy from Crown which ensured the team knew exactly what the system was doing and how it worked. “The Crown consultants were also there to support us and deal with any issues or questions that arose during that time.” With the system now fully up and running, Cook’s initial enthusiasm is undiminished: “The benefits of using Crown are considerable and in our case measurable. It gives the flexibility to meet our business needs as well as being able to grow with the company.” Cook explains that Open Options – the Crown solution – allows managers and HR staff to track absenteeism accurately and effectively and therefore to maximise staff productivity. “From a payroll point of view we had two employees working on time, attendance and payroll,” recalls Cook. “By implementing this system we were able to reduce that number to one, which we did through natural wastage.” As the HR team has become more familiar with the new system, more benefits have become apparent, as Cook observes: “The email system was interesting, where we could put in KPIs and an email is fired off to the HR team, allowing us to focus on attendance issues as and when they arise. “The built-in Bradford Factor also enables us to differentiate between those employees who are regular truants and those who are genuinely ill,” Cooks adds.
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March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 67
The smart factory
I
A seamless interconnected and intelligent system of ICT, machines and manufacturing data, or a building where all employees know what they are doing: what does a smart factory mean to you? IBM wanted to find out at a Manufacturer Directors’ Forum dinner in Sheffield. Will Stirling reports.
nterconnected industry, cyberphysical systems, decentralised production, tablet-operated factories. A real glimpse of the future or a load of marketing codswallop?
The smart workplace, and the smart factory, is coming. IBM, like other big technology firms, is now firmly established as a ‘business solutions provider’ rather than a
The companies joining IBM for dinner were: Representative
Position
Company
Steve Radcliffe
Managing Director
Clugston Construction
James Selka
Production and Personnel Director
AESSEAL
Peter Birtles
Chairman
Sheffield Forgemasters
David O’Hara
Group Finance Director
MTL Group Ltd
Peter Stocks
Operations Director
William Beckett Plastics
Andrew Woods
Business Development Manager
Tata Speciality Steel
John Robb
Marketing Director
Cooper Industries
Simon Carr
Managing Director
Henry Boot Construction
Alison Bettac
Director of Training
Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing
Clive Porter
Managing Director
Darron SBO
Mick Hood
HR Director
Tata Speciality Steel
Ian Cosgrove
Director
MGB Plastics
68 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
manufacturer or software company. As such it is keen to find out what the notion of ‘smart business’ means to companies in the manufacturing sector. Eleven manufacturing and construction companies joined the technology giant under the auspices of ’s Manufacturer Directors’ Forum to explore applications of smart technology.
Remain relevant
Most guests related to the need to embrace mobile communications in their businesses. Simon Carr, managing director of construction and property company Henry Boot, said rendering real-time business information on smart phones and tablets was becoming more important in his company. “Also young people use this technology as second nature, so business has to adopt these solutions or risk isolating the next generation of potential employees,” Carr said, a point many agreed with. In the same industry, Steve Radcliffe, managing director at Clugston Construction, said “We are looking at and trialling the use of tablets and smart phones to assist with planned and reactive maintenance for buildings
Manufacturer Directors’ Forum
to enable our personnel to be able to deal with such matters without having to return to offices and depots to look at records.” Where smart business means intelligent software, both the construction industry guests agreed that Building Information Modelling, or BIM, is very topical. Simon Carr is on a BIM steering group in the Sheffield City Region called BIM4SMEs. The UK government is driving a requirement to have electronic records of future buildings in order to improve the efficiency of building, running, managing and maintaining them. “The potential for smart technology to integrate all aspects of factory or workspace building and operation is very clear,” said Radcliffe. Education and training, as it often does, dominated the discussion. The guests agreed that to engage young people in the manufacturing, construction and trade industries required these sectors to engage with smart technology. IBM’s Colin Smith was impressed with the notion of teachers getting day release to visit companies to explore their needs, rather than, or as well as, visits by schoolchildren. This was needed in several sectors to better explain how to prepare young people for work. It was noted that the ability, using information technology, to carry out many functions from one’s desk was producing change in the education and training of people coming into Industry. “Although in construction we still need people with hands-on trades skills for many of our tasks, such as bricklaying,” qualified Clugston’s Radcliffe.
Sociability and service
The place of social media was also discussed. The consensus seemed to be that to raise public profile in the companies attending, social media had its place. But, in a very pure business to business environment where one company is selling a very specific product to another company who knows that product completely, SM had limited value and could be seen as wasteful noise. However, guests did express a real appreciation for increased visibility of how other businesses are changing. Progressing from once core
competencies to new solutions in order to compete, win new business and survive recession. John Robb, managing director of lighting manufacturer Cooper Industries in Rotherham, recently acquired by The Eaton Corporation, said LED technology had changed their business and brought about a repositioning of lighting as a solution to a business problem rather than a commodity with a traditional sales approach which touted “this light is better than yours”. “A lot of businesses have recently come round to this philosophy. How can I make my product or service relevant to my customers, giving them benefits like increased sales or decreased costs, rather than a pure selling approach,” said IBM’s Mr Smith. But surely a light is a light is a light? An example of the consultancy-like work Cooper is doing comes from Heathrow Terminal 5, which has a large number of blown lights that remain unchanged. “When they designed the building, they didn’t devote enough time to working out how to get someone up there,” said Cooper Industries’ John Robb. Some businesses are geared very specifically on scheduling a tight and fluctuating programme of orders. Mechanical seals manufacturer AESSEAL is such a company. With a huge number of SKUs and multiple customers globally, it’s pledge is guaranteed delivery anywhere in the world within 48-hours or no charge. James Selka, production and HR director at AES, said the awardwinning company is examining the “changing and demanding requirements for the machine human interface and the need to accommodate creativity in production planning.” It is embarking on an exercise that is trying to finesse order variance with lean manufacturing and better human/machine interaction. The smart factories of the future themselves may be built quickly, or in modular ways to enable rapid relocation or reconfiguration. “The modularisation of construction components that is happening now might also enable more flexibility with smart factories when the building owner wishes to make changes to building layout in order to keep up with their changing requirements,” said Steve Radcliffe.
IT in Manufacturing
Smart procurement ICT and integrated industry can play a role in supplier analysis, it was proposed. How many companies today have unnecessarily long supply chains, inherited from old management or an acquired company? MGB Plastics in Rotherham is the UK’s biggest manufacturer of wheelie bins, and can turn out one million units a year. In late 2013 the company won a big contract to supply Birmingham City Council, 50-miles away. “But the local council in Rotherham sources all its wheelie bins from a company in Germany. We are ten minutes away,” said Ian Cosgrove, managing director of the plastic moulding business. Perhaps there is a better role for technology to expose local source suppliers to organisations that need manufactured goods.
The potential for smart technology to integrate all aspects of factory or workspace building and operation is very clear Steve Radcliffe Managing Director, Clugston Construction
FIND OUT MORE The Manufacturer Directors’ Forum is a knowledge exchange network for senior manufacturing professionals. Meeting regularly for dinner and debate at locations across the country, the forum tackles a diverse range of topics relevant to running competitive manufacturing companies in the UK. For more information contact Grace Gilling at: g.gilling@ sayonemedia.com or on 0207 401 6033.
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 69
We knew we needed an accurate and precise 3D design that could give us a realistic and cost-effective way to test and tweak Night Train 2 prototypes. The solution was SolidWorks
One of the key advantages of the new SolidWorks offering is online collaboration via its built-in cloud capabilities.
Geoff Bodine Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project
Solid experience At January’s SolidWorks World in San Diego, California, Dassault Systèmes explored the requirements of ‘Design in the Age of Experience’.
A
ccording to Dassault, in the age of experience, the world of design has changed and it is critical that designers be more social, more conceptual and more collaborative. Exactly how many customers are able to honestly say they tick all the boxes of SolidWorks’ rhetoric? It’s easy to be dubious but it was clear at SolidWorks World that the user community, Dassault partner companies, and SolidWorks itself are confident the technology is surging forward in leaps and bounds. One could truly sense that many companies were right on the edge of delivering the next big thing.
SolidWorks and Sochi
One of the most interesting presentations at SolidWorks World came from the creators of the gold
70 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
medal winning ‘Night Train’ US Bobsled, Geoff Bodine and Bob Cuneo. Speaking to an audience of nearly 5,000 top designers and mechanical engineers at the global conference, the duo shared their 3D design experience in the creation of the next generation bobsled, Night Train 2®. At the time of writing this article, the 4-man bobsled team was yet to compete at the Winter Olympics in Sochi but regardless of the outcome, the preparation was certainly podium-worthy in its own right. The Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project was the result of former Nascar driver Geoff Bodine’s quest to build an Americanmade, medal-winning bobsled. After watching the USA team struggle using discarded European sleds at the 1992 Winter Olympics, Bodine applied his high-speed racing know-how with Cuneo’s design engineering skills to create a new generation of bobsleds. The result of their collaboration led to
a new bobsled design, the ‘Night Train’, used by the 2010 American team to win an Olympic gold medal for the first time in 62 years. The original bobsled’s aerodynamics were optimised for the fast downhill track of the Vancouver, Canada competition in 2010. The track at the Sochi Games, however, is filled with three tricky uphill sections that require precise handling to generate the most speed out of the track’s curves. Aware of the strict rules enforced by sport officials and the challenges of achieving even better race times, Bodine knew that the 2D design tool they used for the first generation Night Train would not be enough. “We knew we needed an accurate and precise 3D design that could give us a realistic and cost-effective way to test and tweak Night Train 2 prototypes. The solution
SolidWorks World
IT in Manufacturing
With SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual, I was able to rapidly produce three or more concept configurations in the time it would take to produce one in conventional 3D CAD solutions William MacLeod, Senior Engineer, Kennedy Hygiene
was SolidWorks,” said Geoff Bodine, Bo-Dyn Bobsled Project. “SolidWorks helped us design using a lighter material and creating multiple 3D prototypes of the bobsled on the computer so we could get it just the way we wanted it before we began building and manufacturing it.”
SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual
“As technologies and business models evolve, our users look to us to provide them with the newest tools to help them collaborate more widely and leverage 3D manufacturing and 3D printing in order to be more competitive and innovative,” said Bertrand Sicot, CEO, SolidWorks, Dassault Systèmes. And so says the company, SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual, has done just that. For the first time ever, a social platform has been created by Dassault which powers both the global SolidWorks community, as well as a new generation of process experiences for the worldwide Catia community. Because of this, the cooperation opportunities for SolidWorks users are profound. This opens the door for our customers across multiple industries and companies where Dassault Systèmes and its other applications are significant players. In addition to seeing the new design environment live, attendees at SolidWorks World heard from several customers
who have used the product in testing and production for six months. “I used the Concept Archive to investigate and test different ways of developing my idea at the same time. There are quite a few ways I can develop my concept, but my fundamental constraints remain the same,” said William MacLeod, senior engineer, Kennedy Hygiene. “With SolidWorks Mechanical Conceptual, I was able to rapidly produce three or more concept configurations in the time it would take to produce one in conventional 3D CAD solutions. I can quickly iterate on a design and move the selected concept into SolidWorks for final detailing.” In addition, the new SolidWorks2014 release delivers major productivity and usability gains and allows companies to spend more time on knowledgecentric tasks that help push innovation to the forefront. Productivity boosters, workflow and mobility enhancements enable users to re-use data more dynamically, expediting the sharing of design data to help accelerate collaboration within product development. Added mobility support for Android and iOS devices allows the more than 2.1 million SolidWorks users to connect and experience new 3D designs anywhere and anytime. Check out the SolidWorks 2014 video here: http://bit.ly/ TMSolidWorks2014
Multi-material 3D printing Is it a bird, is it an oil painting? No it’s a multicoloured, multi-material 3D printed object US-based 3D printing company Stratasys, one of SolidWorks major partner companies, announced during SolidWorks World the launch of the first and only 3D printer to combine colours with multimaterial 3D printing. The Objet500 Connex3 Colour Multi-material 3D Printer features technology that combines droplets of three base materials to produce parts with virtually unlimited combinations of rigid, flexible, and transparent colour materials as well as colour digital materials – all in a single print run. The ability to achieve the characteristics of an assembled part without assembly or painting could potentially save large amounts of time for manufacturers. More than 50 editors from all over the world attended the launch of the Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer from Stratasys at SolidWorks World 2014. Among the presenters were Stratasys’ Executive VP of marketing, Jon Cobb, who opened the event, and director of marketing Bruce Bradshaw, who presented the product. In addition, Stratasys customers Jason Lopes, lead system engineer at Legacy Effects (the company responsible for the Iron Man and Robocop suits), and Patrick Zeigle, engineering technician from Trek Bicycles, presented the value of the Objet500 Connex3 to their businesses. Watch the video here: http://bit.ly/ StratasysObjet2014
March 2014 | Issue 2 | Volume 17 | www.themanufacturer.com 71
Sharing in Growth
Growth SIGnal
Don’t say it too loudly, but it looks like government is learning how to deliver effective industry support.
A
dmittedly the new, exemplary programme, which has caught my eye is for the already heavily invested aerospace sector. But it does have the shining virtues of being well coordinated, long term and relevant to SMEs according to one of its early beneficiaries. Sharing in Growth (SIG) was launched last year to help high potential suppliers in the aerospace supply chain make the leap from SME to mid cap level by preparing their management and priming succession with appropriate skills and structure.
Andrew Churchill, MD of Nuneaton-based precision engineering firm JJ Churchill told me last month that he felt the scheme was “exciting and disruptive”. Controversially, SIG makes no bones about picking winners – though government representatives behind the scheme would shrink from using that terminology explicitly – “seeking gazelles” is apparently the new parlance. The scheme is hunting for 30-40 gazelles of around £10m to £20m turnover with the intention of investing just over £1m in each over four years.
The need for SIG: Aerospace supply chain spend in the UK is declining due to failure to meet sourcing criteria Sourcing Criteria
Cost, Quality and Delivery
Stragegy
Root Causes
Proposed Levers
Productivity
Low level of labour productivity Outdated manufacturing processes
Supply Management
Weak purchasing power/ low leverage Non optimital supply chain design
Supply Management
Factor and Capital Costs
High labour rates Limited financing schemes Relative high capital costs
Overhead Efficiency, Company Financing Strategy
Management Capabilities
Low managerial skills with limited foresight Lacking entrepreneurial spirit across business
72 www.themanufacturer.com | March 2014 | Issue 2| Volume 17
Lean Procution System Modern Manufacturing
Capability Assessment
LAST WORD
The funding will deliver top to bottom training and development for staff and the SMEs in question must match the value of this funding with value in time. This means everyone from the MD to the newest apprentice at a beneficiary firm can reap rewards. To make sure money, and time, is well spent, beneficiary firms go through an intensive diagnostic course to identify current skills strengths and weaknesses alongside company strategy before training is selected and delivered. The key is to draw out, not what companies are good and bad at today, but what they will need to get good at in order to grow into a new company size bracket. So far, after eight months of searching, around 20 firms have been selected to join SIG and intends to track the impact of funding on business and individuals at different levels in some of those organisations. “It’s not compulsory for everyone. But SIG offers every employee the chance to codify their experience and learning to date and set them on a professional development journey – and it’s all funded,” enthused Churchill. Using time to match funding for this scheme is a neat innovation for an SME development model, but where exactly is the money involved coming from? Rolls-Royce, which pushed hard for almost two years to see SIG come to fruition, has provided a significant chunk of the pot while government, via the Regional Growth Fund, is providing the rest. It’s probably important to note here that while Rolls-Royce has coordinated SIG, it is not necessary to be a Rolls supplier in order to qualify for funding. It will be interesting to track the trajectory of firms that get involved with SIG – will we see a new generation of mid cap British aero manufacturers in four years’ time? If so, it will become crucial to develop a question which is already being asked in some circles: Can this model be replicated for other sectors? Government can’t afford intensive intervention in the growth of every firm in the UK – and nor should it have to. But is there a way of expanding perhaps a lightweight version of this approach to ‘Mittlestand-making’ in other sectors? Finding an OEM champion in each would be a first step.
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