Featured in The Sunday Times: When it comes to business, Britain’s great… at dithering
PP Control & Automation, with comments from Chief Technical and Information Officer, Ian Knight, featured in The Sunday Times.
When Ian Knight heard about the government’s plan to boost apprenticeships, he couldn’t believe his luck. The 43-year-old was desperate to inject some new blood into Walsall-based PP Control & Automation, where he oversees staff training.
Things have not gone to plan, though. The new apprentices Knight has hired are spending more time in the classroom than on the job. It’s not just Brexit: this government is failing business at every turn.
Ian Knight, Chief Information Officer at PP Control & Automation (PP C&A) challenges the prevailing, often vague narrative around AI adoption and reframes the conversation around a more practical starting point: operational constraints.
Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant concept for manufacturers. It is already being explored across quotation, production planning, engineering, quality, supply chain and customer service functions. Yet, for many organisations, the gap between experimentation and meaningful operational impact remains difficult to close.
On paper, defined discipline-specific suppliers can look organised. However, every additional supplier introduces another handoff, and every handoff creates another point where time, quality, communication and accountability can be lost.
Very rarely does growth not surface because an OEM lacks ambition. Shortcomings arise because operating models built to support such ambition don’t evolve quickly enough.