COVER STORY APRIL 2019
“Industry 4.0 is just a change of branding” – more quotes from the roundtable
“Most managers will assume their problems are
on the shopfl oor; most people on the shopfl oor
will say their problems with management.”
George Donaldson, Devro
“People are the most important part of the journey,
and it’s vital to remember that as we discuss
Industry 4.0.”
Ian Collinson, SMAS
“Industry 4.0 is something companies have been
pursuing for years – just with a change of branding.”
Dr Remi Zante, AFRC
these staff buy into the culture
of the company. “We don’t just
pay for a pair of hands,” he said.
“We expect people to engage
their brains and add value to
the process.”
“The easy trap to fall into
is assuming that introducing
automation will lead to an
improvement in productivity,”
said Zante. “Unless you have
the people to implement it,
you’ll be stuck in neutral. It’s
also important to remember
that having people who think
they know how to programme
and having those who can
actually get the best out of the
technology are two separate
things – and it’s creating
barriers across the industry.”
A burning desire, or a
burning platform?
What does all this mean for
Scottish manufacturing’s status?
have to start attracting this kind
of people into the industry.”
Handley agreed: “The
lead time on people is far
greater than the lead time on
technology,” he said. “One
day there will be a piece of
technology to solve all the
issues we have, and it’s vital that
we have equipped our staff for
when that day happens.”
At Devro, there is one issue
in particular that has been
causing headaches for several
years – specifi cally, tying off
the ends of sausage skin spools
before they are shipped to
customers. A relatively simple
fi x, you may think, but one that
has seen automated solutions
come and go. Instead, the
factory employs a team of
people, whose job it is to tie
tight knots day-in, day-out. Gary
Shiels, Devro’s general manager,
told the roundtable how even
“Any capital investment we make needs a two-year
RoI, which can be hard. Because of that, we look to
maximise the best assets we have – our people.”
Gary Shiels, Devro
“Emerging markets have very broad supply
chains, but their depth into specialist skills is
not as mature as in the UK.”
Yan Tiefenbrun, Castle Precision Engineering
“It’s very easy to just do management – turn
up every day, read some reports and go home
again. It’s very hard to be a leader.”
Kevin Handley, Distell International
Well, the good news is that the shoots of regrowth
are there. The much-anticipated, £65 million
National Manufacturing Institute for Scotland,
announced in 2017, is due for a soft opening in the
middle of this year, and will provide a signifi cant
boost to the country’s R&D capabilities – which
are already at record levels (see p6).
Further to that, plans have been announced
to make Scotland a hub for space exploration.
Already, more satellites are manufactured in
Scotland than anywhere else in Europe, but plans
are afoot to develop a full spaceport on the north
coast. The Scottish government estimates that the
nation’s space industry could be worth £4bn by
2030. It’s this sort of ambitious thinking that will
get Scottish manufacturing back on its pedestal at
the top of the global manufacturing standings.
Tiefenbrun, at least, is optimistic that change
is afoot. “The integration of SMAS and Scottish
Enterprise with the government is very coherent,”
he said. “It’s fair to say that in the past few
decades, there hasn’t been much of a strategy
to make Scotland a ‘leader’ in X or Y. However,
what we have got is ambition. We have more
alignment between manufacturers, agencies like
SMAS and organisations like the AFRC than we
have in a long time, and that’s something we have
to leverage. If we all work together we can make
great things happen – there is enough alignment
for us to either have a burning platform or a
burning desire to go onto something even bigger
and better.”
However, this won’t happen without serious
eff ort, acknowledged Collinson as he concluded
the roundtable. “We sit here in the third quarter
of global competitiveness, and there’s a reason
for that,” he said. “It’s about investment into
reseach and development, skills, automation and
leadership. As an industry, and as a nation, we are
both risk-averse and investment-averse. The task
of us all, both in the private and public sector, it
to push the message that risk is good and there’s
a benefi t to taking them.”
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