Poll results: what’s the biggest barrier to production?

In early March, 2021 The Engineer, in partnership with Ricardo, looked at the process of bringing a new product into production and heard from a range of experts about the technologies and methods that organisations can use to accelerate this process. For our last poll, we asked readers of The Engineer for what they believe is biggest barrier to production.

The path from concept to volume production is complex and multi-faceted, but these challenges can perhaps be distilled down into a number of key areas, starting with technology.

As we regularly report, a revolution is underway in manufacturing technologies: from the rise of digital tools that help align design and manufacturing, to advances in 3D printing that can negate the need for investment in tooling etc and the emergence of technologies such as Cobots that bring the benefits of automation to organisations on tighter budgets. Deploying these technologies can be key to enhancing productivity and accelerating production, but for many organisations - particularly in the UK’s SME community - there is often a reluctance to invest in new production technology. Does, therefore, access to technology represent the biggest barrier to production?