Engineering news
Our respondents are drawn from the membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and readers of Professional Engineering magazine, and comprise leaders from across the manufacturing industry, including CEOs, directors and other high-ranking executives. More than half work for companies with a turnover of more than £20m.
The findings of the survey, which was conducted throughout December 2019, are revealing. The industry is cautiously optimistic, although respondents were generally split on whether the industry is likely to grow in the next 12 months as the impacts of new trading conditions become clear.
That’s acting as something of a handbrake on capital investment as companies wait to see what regulatory changes occur in the next 12 months – a key consideration for the 80% of those responding whose companies export to the European Union.
In terms of exporting, respondents don’t expect to see a huge amount of change in the next 12 months – it’s likely to be another period of caution as companies hold off on striking into new territories in case of new tariffs or diverging standards.
When they do invest, it’s likely to be in research and development, to help drive down costs and create new products – currently, respondents were spending an average of 11% on R&D, although there was a very broad range.
The government’s Industrial Strategy has been designed to provide support in this area, but doesn’t seem to be cutting through – very few respondents felt it was effective, and a significant number did not have an opinion about it. There is, however, encouraging progress being made on sustainability – more than half of the respondents’ companies are now measuring and mitigating their environmental impact.
Although discussion of automation and Industry 4.0 tends to dominate the discourse in manufacturing, our respondents believe that there’s greater potential in supply-chain optimisation, rather than a complete overhaul at this point. However, there were indications that this decade will be the point at which long-mooted concepts like digitalisation finally become mainstream, rather than proof of concept.
That’s bound to change the way many factories operate, whether that’s because of predictive maintenance reducing downtime, or improved sensors and machines increasing the level of automation, and changing the make-up of the workforce.
As these changes break through, it’s likely that a different range of skills will be required, and that’s one of the biggest concerns among our respondents. More than 80% have said they’ve struggled to find people with the right skills for the job – whether that’s because graduates don’t have the practical skills to go with the theory, or because of uncertainty reducing the number of skilled migrants from European countries coming to the UK. More than half said that basic engineering proficiency would continue to be the most important skill, although there was increased awareness of the importance of data.