Featured in Business Focus Magazine: Growth in the face of uncertainty
PP Control & Automation, with comments from Managing Director, Tony Hague, feature in the latest edition of Business Focus Magazine, which is a leading, bi-monthly business to business publication that keeps up with the latest developments in the business world by talking to the people that make them happen.
It’s an uncertain time for many businesses in the UK right now, but PP Control & Automation are showing how uncertainty is not something to be scared of – but can be managed to create growth opportunities.
“In a nutshell everything we do is about the control and automation of complex machinery – this could be in sectors such as machine tool, food processing, packaging, printing, medical and scientific industries to name a few. We look to provide a more complete strategic outsourcing solution that meets the specific needs of the customers and can include electrical, electronic, pneumatic and mechanical design and build,” – Tony Hague, Managing Director, PP Control & Automation.
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.
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?
This checklist is designed to help machine builders and OEMs review whether their current manufacturing partners are supporting future growth, or creating hidden friction across engineering, procurement, operations and customer delivery.