25th September 2024
“Growth is the challenge and investment is the solution – investment in new industries, technologies and new infrastructure.”
Fine and encouraging words indeed – so why are we already seeing UK technology companies at the forefront of innovation failing at a rate of knots because they cannot get the necessary support and funding at home?
We either lose this innovation or these companies look for support and investment outside the country. If they then successfully scale, we then lose the long-term wealth creation.
In my opinion, we have a real over cautious and short-term view on investment and it is holding us back.
Clean energy is a prime example. We are seeing some amazing start-up technology businesses, many having been spawned from our world leading universities in sectors such as electrification and hydrogen (production, storage & delivery).
Unfortunately, they simply cannot attract the funding necessary to develop and scale their process at the pace they need to. Private investment is out there but can be difficult to obtain with many strings attached and, ultimately, this is where government needs to do more.
The opportunity in clean energy is akin to the excitement of industry 4.0, but one could argue the size of the prize is much, much bigger.
However, we have already seen large UK projects given to oversees companies, a long-running mistake we have seen before when we had expansion in wind energy – almost all the spend went to German, Danish and Spanish companies. As we all know, only in the UK could this ever happen.
So, let’s not give hollow words and ear-catching speeches. Instead, let’s invest in a long-term Industrial Strategy that cherishes and cultivates UK innovation and creates stronger links between government, education and business. We have all the skills, all the capabilities, we just lack any meaningful long-term vision and have done so for a very long time.”
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.
A leading aquaculture specialist – that is changing the way fish are vaccinated safely – has signed a major manufacturing deal.
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.
Recent weeks have brought two important industry moments into sharp focus, concluding that demand for AI and automation is rising, but investment, skills, and long-term thinking must follow.
For decades, one question has sat at the heart of operational strategy for machine builders and OEMs: make or buy? It’s a familiar debate and it isn’t the wrong question by any means, but perhaps it is an incomplete one.
In most machine building businesses, change is still treated as an exception. A late-stage drawing revision, component substitution, or wiring tweak discovered during build. Each one is handled, resolved, and signed off. And then everyone moves on. But what if that’s the wrong way to think about it? What if change isn’t the disruption to the system but the system itself?
