The commission consists of nine men and eight women from business, trade bodies and academic institutions, and includes top-level representatives from EEF, GE Digital, Renishaw, the CBI, ABB, Nestle, Rolls Royce, the TUC, and Jaguar Land Rover.
Priorities for its first meeting included discussing the pilot for adopting digital technology by manufacturers in North West England, and the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund for digital manufacturing which aims to bring together UK researchers with business to tackle industrial and societal challenges.
The commission also discussed how the manufacturing industry can be transformed by new technologies such as 3D printing, as well as the need for stronger and more ambitious leadership.
According to Maier, the commission “promises to deliver [the Made Smarter Review’s] core recommendation of driving digitalisation across UK and invigorating industrial strategy. We need now, more than ever, to unite business, employees and government behind a strategy that boosts industrial productivity and improves living standards.
“We will build on our North West Pilot, and look at how we can scale our efforts up across the country,” he adds. “If we get this right, I believe we can kick-start a new industrial revolution, that puts digital tech at the centre of economic policy-making.”
EEF CEO Stephen Phipson describes the formation of the commission as “a bold step in harnessing the expertise right across our sector. We look forward to helping it play a key role in unleashing the potential of manufacturing as part of the fourth industrial revolution and a modern industrial strategy.”
The UK is one of the world’s ten largest manufacturing economies and the fourth-largest in the EU. In 2017, manufacturing GVA (gross value added) totalled £186bn and supported 2.7 million jobs (with estimates of 5 million across the whole of the manufacturing value chain). The sector still accounts for 48% of UK’s exports of goods and services.
Business secretary Clark predicts that the increased adoption of digital technologies “will bring enormous benefits, potentially generating £455bn over the next ten years – boosting productivity, creating thousands of new highly skilled jobs and enabling more efficient, cleaner production systems”.
Conclusions:
- This is the first I’ve heard of this new MSC initiative – one wonders how it will interact with others such as the PLG and PIN
- The MSC should be a sector specific part of an overall UK Productivity Centre (UKPC)
- Given manufacturing now comprises only some 15% of the total UK economy, where are the comparable initiatives for the other 85%?