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Jason Ford
Jason Ford
News Editor
Banishing manufacturing stereotypes
Does your experience of modern manufacturing include dark, cold factories and oily rags? Thought not, and neither does EEF chief executive, Terry Scuoler.
Scuoler’s organisation wants to challenge these stereotypes and has launched the second EEF Heroes of Modern UK Manufacturing Photography Competition.
Entrants are being asked to capture the people, products, places and processes that make UK manufacturing great and to have their work submitted by October 31.
In EEF publicity material, business minister Mark Prisk said: ‘Copies of some of last year’s winning photographs are proudly displayed in my ministerial office – they’re a daily reminder of what’s great about UK manufacturing and how crucial the sector is to rebuilding and rebalancing the UK economy.’
The competition is free to enter, with three categories of professional, amateur and young people aged 14-19.
Winners, who will share £5000 of prize vouchers from Canon, will be announced at the EEF Future Manufacturing Awards in January 2012. More details can be found here:http://www.eef.org.uk/photo.
A reminder that The Engineer’s very own technology and innovation awards - which rewards technology led collaborations - is also open for entries. Visit www.theengineerawards.co.uk to find out more.
On Wednesday this week IMechE is hosting a talk entitled ‘The role of product innovation within the new manufacturing economy’ at its Birdcage Walk premises.
Delivered by Graham Lacy, technical director at PDD, the talk will consider the past 30 years, an era that saw the UK embrace a service economy and manufacturing weathering European integration, the digital revolution, globalisation, the emergence of the East and three recessions.
Manufacturing has, of course, survived but challenges remain in terms of resources, sustainability, regulation and competition and needing to produce better products at lower prices despite higher costs.
Graham will explore how innovation - a word whose definition has evolved into different meanings - can be applied to the new manufacturing economy, assessing how it may help UK companies to be more competitive at home and overseas.
The rise of one particular Eastern economy is on the agenda this week at Greenwich University, which is hosting ‘Doing Business in India’ on Thursday.
India’s economy is said to be expanding with GDP growth at nine per cent per annum but challenges remain for world’s largest democracy to become a full knowledge economy.
Luckily, the Indian government is increasingly open to international collaboration and is said to be creating a positive environment for building partnerships between the UK and India across a wide range of sectors.
With this in mind, the organizers are encouraging business professionals and academics considering entering the Indian market or who are already active in India to attend.
Presentations, panel discussions and case studies will be presented by academics and business professionals on doing business with India. Similarly, one-to-one clinics by specialist consultants with experience of developing business with India will also be available to delegates.
Last Thursday David Willetts, minister for universities and science, invited proposals for £5m of annual funding for collaborations between the UK and India in the areas of skills development, innovation partnerships and education. The call for proposals marks the launch of Phase 2 of the UK India Research and Education Initiative (UKIERI).
Readers' comments (8)
Anonymous | 13 Jun 2011 2:50 pm
Sorry to say but in response to the title of the article. My experience of modern manufacturing does heavily involve cold dark caverns and oily rags. That environment does indeed seem to be cultural to the UK, especially along the M62 corridor. Traveling as a roving engineer for an automotive supplier I note that the Germans, French and Swiss could seem to avoid descending to that environment but even new facilities in the UK would start to show signs of wear much sooner than in other countries
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Peter Field | 13 Jun 2011 3:45 pm
Good luck to the photo competition and to UK modern industry; we badly need more. Many of the four million unemployed or under employed are desperate for work and would be delighted if only there were hundreds of dark older factories in existence.
One challenge would be a photo competition of all manufacturing and the most dramatic and emotive photos would undoubtedly be of older traditional industries whatever the skill behind the camera.
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Neil Williams | 13 Jun 2011 4:20 pm
Absolutely agree Peter, what exactly is wrong with dark dirty honest engineering factories, surely it is the quest for new clean high technology that has led to the lack of jobs and businesses associated with the old black country and similar industrial areas falling in to decline, farming off dirty work to countries that are happy to do them. Drive through any old manufacturing town and you will see hundreds of people with little or no qualifications unable to find work, because some bright spark thought it would be better to send their capability overseas. Most new UK factory jobs now require degrees, which is great for those that can attain them, are we destined for a service industry economy for the majority of employees?
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tony smee | 13 Jun 2011 11:25 pm
Agree with all the comments, spent all my working life in dark and dirty places and loved every minute. In fact when I retired I missed the smells, particularly the oil & gas, I think it's mainly H2S. There is great satisfaction in building or commissioning a large plant or piece of machinery, and it has to be experienced. It is certainly not to be decried or given a negative image or sent overseas.
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Ian H.Thain | 14 Jun 2011 12:00 pm
Although now officially retired I stood in recently at a friend's factory when he was short-staffed and spent an enjoyable month operating a manual lathe in a freezing workshop, wiping down from time to time with an oily rag which, by the look of it had seen several generations come and go.
My retirement day job is designing pick-and-place robots for the PCB industry; but without those early years spent in cold dark factories I doubt if I'd have quite the same experience of real-life manufacturing with which to do it.
We should be proud of our oily past, not ashamed of it. It's often in the critical "tenth-of-a-thou" area that a company's product succeeds or fails, and there's nothing to beat solid machine shop experience for teaching what works and what doesn't.
By all means let us develop and exploit everything that molecular scale technologies can deliver; but I'd be much more confident about our future as a manufacturing nation (which is the only future we've got) if I saw oily rags in evidence again in our schools and colleges.
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david weston | 17 Jun 2011 11:54 am
I must agree with Ian. As a 15 year old the forging and shaping of a piece of metal, heat treating, grinding and then using my cold chisel was something I'll never forget. We still need to teach the basics, whether its forming metals or wood or wiring simple lighting circuits. Youngsters of today are not much different from my day, give them the tools....etc.
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Geoff Wilson | 17 Jun 2011 5:05 pm
Manufacturing still needs the men with the oily rags to put together and make to work all those fancy machines designed by people who have got a string of letters behind their names but no real knowledge. The factories which I go into have an ageing group of highly skilled fitters whose contribution is undervalued by those who decide that anyone without a degree has no contribution to make. We must train a new generation of fitters to replace those whose skill we rely on so much at present.
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Stephen Bunch | 20 Jun 2011 9:46 am
How do you think mechanical and civil engineering works .... suits and laptops? fine but who does the construction, someone has to get dirty hands. There are basically two sorts of
Engineer, those that invent and plan and those who construct.They need each other. I know several dirty hands who are quite brilliant and more than a few CEng who are quite useless . Encourage Engineering don't divide it.
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