Roundtable debate: What is Advanced Manufacturing?

Jon Excell
Editor, The Engineer

Ian Godden
Chairman, ADS

Dr Clive Hickman
Chief Executive,Tata Motors European Technical Centre

John Ransford
Manufacturing Advisor,Manufacturing Advisory Service

Prof Richard Hague
Loughborough University, Additive Manufacturing Research Group

Stuart Nathan
Features Editor, The Engineer

Marc Saunders
General Manager, Renishaw UK and Ireland

Jason Aldridge
Managing Director, Arrowsmith Engineering

Andrew Bromley
Engineering Director, David Brown Gear Systems

The Engineer: What do we actually mean by advanced manufacturing? Does it refer to exotic new non-traditional techniques,

improvements to existing production methods or a mixture of the two?

John Ransford: Advanced manufacturing is so wide and varied. What may be advanced in one area may not be advanced in another. I think it’s companies climbing a ladder from where they are to a higher level using different techniques.

Ian Godden: I’ve got a different view. In the UK, at least, manufacturing had become denigrated as unacceptable, because everyone assumed that it’s all going to low-cost manufacturing in China and India. Therefore we’ve had to invent the term advanced manufacturing in order to justify that this is the bit that’s going to stay here because it’s ‘very advanced’. It doesn’t define anything; it makes that statement.