OU on the BBC: Made in Britain - Episode One

Evan Davis has quite rightly emphasised to need for Britain to concentrate on new area of business that will have high added value. I have the following comments:
- I feel on the basis of my experience (see below) that successful technical innovation requires close linkage between research, development, manufacture and the appreciation of customer/user requirements
- I feel the Government is not doing enough to promote the need for application of science for manufacturing and needs to recognize that some areas of prospect require ‘seed corn’ funding (notably in regard to ‘green technology’ opportunities).
- As you noted much new manufacturing involves fewer people per unit of output than earlier industry and often requires a higher intellectual rather than craft skill level. This problem needs to be faced for the future.
- There needs to an appreciation of the need to move to a more sustainable future where there is less consumption and less keeping up with ‘the Jones’s’
- It needs to be remembered that ‘the arts’ (theatre, etc) both contribute to the quality of life in the UK and provide good export earnings. This is surely an area of ‘business’ worth noting and promoting.

My own background (see http://www.infostatic.co.uk/JNC-Bio.html) is as a physicist who has been involved in engineering and in manufacturing.

I have come to appreciate the need for good linkage between research and development activities, how things might be made and the need to appreciate user requirements. This has been a very evident requirement in the operation of the small company I ran for 26 years (1983 – 2009) concerned with the design, development, manufacture and marketing of electrostatic measuring instruments and methods of measurement. Yes, it was a small specialist operation – but profitable and with around 60% export. The need was clear for a close linkage between understanding customer needs, how instruments would be used and the creation and development of ideas to achieve this. Development needed to appreciate how, easily and quickly, ideas could be tested, proved and turned into manufactureable instruments. These then needed to be made and promoted to the market.

I find it difficult to believe that good design for manufacturing can be achieved without good feedback from contact with manufacturing experience. Good design must surely start from appreciation both of customer needs and the possibilities to realise ideas in practical and economic ways. I wonder how ARM, for example, achieves this feedback to support its success with microprocessor designs.

The programme was a wonderful 'chocolate box' lesson in economics, but the truth is that if Britain is really serious about rebalancing its trade deficit, it needs to invest for the LONG TERM in engineering innovation and products. The problem in Britain today is that nobody respects engineers, (and that includes our own engineering institutions). Bankers invest to get a maximum return in the shortest possible timeframe from any quarter, at the expense of broader, longer-term and sustainable objectives delivering value to the UK, (often investing in trend-led ventures and asset stripping poorly managed companies), whilst the civil service has no idea about either engineering or industry because most of them have never worked outside of an institutionalised environment (and in any case most senior civil servants have degrees in the humanities, social sciences, law or arts based subjects)!

All the people who have responded below have been articulate, clear and to the point in understanding the critical issues that Britain faces with regards to radically improving our economic performance. Why is it therefore that this country's policy makers are unable to listen, understand and implement strategies that resolve these so sensible observations and suggestions regarding our economic weaknesses.

I cannot wait to hear Evan Davies views on innovation. My own SME high-technology, business experience over a 10 year period has been that even with a potential world-leading technology and opportunity to develop a broad product range, there is absolutely no source of investment or support from either the private or public sectors. Government procurement is extremely sloppy and precures from perceived 'low-risk' sources, but through which they often have to pay through the nose and in order to 'cut costs' often purchase products from abroad at the expense of UK jobs, UK intellectual property and future economic growth!

Perhaps Evan Davies would like to use our 10 years of struggle as a case-study in what goes wrong when it comes to UK led high-technology innovation. It would make for fascinating analysis. We still have people in this country that have the great ideas with 'innovation' and commercial acumen, but without a source of funding and investment to feed our manufacturing of the future, it will die.

Why is it that we can never learn positive lessons from our past? As one other reader has commented, JCB started in a garage 65 years ago, innovating with a very small team of 3 to 5 people. Look where they are today, one of the UK's most important manufacturers and still a leader in innovation and quality. If we cannot support the next generation of able, highly qualified engineers who can develop future products that have the potential to become tomorrow's main stay industries for this country, we might as well all do as the bankers are doing, accelerate the processes of investing short-term in order to maximise the extraction of capital and profits that will eventually bleed this country dry!

This programme was promoted under the suggestion that Britain's manufacturing industry is not dead and the future can be bright again, so I was surprised to find that most of the first half hour consisted of case studying a suit maker who has decided to close down their UK factory and move it to China. Worst of all, the suggestion seemed to be that this was good for UK manufacturing because it's only low value and therefore not worth having anyway, and that the people who lost their jobs are now much better off working as warehouse staff and shelf stackers rather than in an industry that supported the local economy and gave people jobs they could have pride in.

The attitude of the suit makers sums up exactly what is going wrong when he stated that if he wanted to continue to manufacture in the UK the sale price of his suits would have to double. In a world where people are paying double (and more) for Italian made suits his way of thinking, which is a race to the bottom, is very disappointing and quite frankly if you cannot make a viable business out of selling suits when the cost price per unit would be as little as £16 then that points to deficiencies in his business plan and a complete failure to recognise the extent to which manufacturing in the UK adds value to a product.

An excellent programme, although focused on a historic review of the move of manufacturing from the UK to China, which now feels far behind us. I wonder if Evan Davies is taking full account of the pace of Chinese development when he concludes that the future of manufacturing is bright for the UK, relying on brains rather than brawn.

While the programme nodded to China's growth, it felt far from the global domination predicted by "Made in China" at the Brunel University Design and Innovation graduate presentation last week where we were advised that the 19th century belonged to the UK and Europe, the 20th century to the US and the 21st century to China. US think tank, The Institute for Global Futures predicts the development of 100 new Chinese cities in the next 25 years and in the education stakes we can gain a perspective on that development if we consider that UK graduates number approx. 300,000 per year while China produces 6.3 million graduates, including 250,000 with PhDs.

China's transformation will undoubtedly offer export opportunities for a small country renowned for innovation, imagination and engineering excellence, but it will require all those qualities to be employed by government, along with considerable investment, if the UK is to carve a niche at the forefront of manufacturing ... and that's to say nothing of developments in the rest of Asia, including a technology focused India, but there are more programmes in the series yet to come.