Future of Manufacturing

Great Points

some great points here .. tactical work is knowledge in itself. 

Peter Brooks , I don't think that its all doom and gloom. I'm encouraged by movements like, for example in the UK, The Purpose Dividend and betterbusinessact.org which remind us that just like the Cadburys and Lord Lever, there are individuals with similar values today.

Yes but things like first aid, wiring a plug, basic woodwork or changing a wheel on a car have not changed - unless you have one of those sporty ones with a can of spray foam instead.

And to be fair plenty of youngsters are dead keen to have a go at more once shown  and given the opportunity - as an example we have one lad who after  working through the mechanics badge has really gone well beyond the badge requirements and has just finished changing the brake disks on his dad's car with him and we keep getting sent photos of him proudly holding bits of car....  there are  others who now cook regularly at home and parents have commented how nice it is but they'd never have thought them capable of it. 

I think there is a fear, perhaps more in the heads of some parents really, of letting the children just do stuff, and sitting them in front of a flashing screen seems in some way safer.

In the long term of course it's not.
M.

I agree some are very motivated and keen to learn, but the overall structure is set up to get young into different areas i recall like i say im not that old when certainly in working class areas, apprenticeship's where the goto when leaving school into into the trades, government haven't such an emphasis them now and the hoops they need to go through if that's the route they choose, its not very clear for them and no push for them.

Kendo51 said:

government haven't such an emphasis them now

Actually my experience in recent years has been that UK governments (of whatever colour) have been supportive of apprenticeships, but there are many other challenges due to the decline of manufacturing in the UK, there just aren't the large companies around to take apprentices on. For SMEs it's a big burden to supervise apprentices, and a risk to be certain that they can actually have a job to offer at the end of it. It's very much chicken and egg: in some cases in my experience companies don't want to locate plants in the UK because of concern about the availability of resources (i.e. suitably skilled people), but without growing the manufacturing base we haven't got the capacity to train those people to be ready.

Although there's also the other point that as soon as manufacturing work requires skilled people to carry it out then, because of the cost of living in the UK, it becomes too expensive to do here anyway. It's a massive problem which every "westernised" country now faces - industrialisation pushes standards of living up, but it then reaches a tipping point where that standard of living can't be maintained through industrial work which could now be done more cheaply elsewhere. So then what are the population of that country supposed to do to maintain their standard of living. It doesn't appear that anyone in any government has come with a solution to this yet, and it may be that there isn't one. (Sorry, not one of my more positive posts!)

Wow, what a subject.

On one specific area - preparing people for the world of work (including the skills), my observations:-

1. Kids leaving school (at any age) are generally not prepared in any way for the real world, including turning up, basic workshop skills etc. so are useless for some months beyond menial tasks. I remember meeting university students on block release, they were 21, I was 17, they seemed like children to us, yet we were just the same a year before.

2. As pointed out by others, large employer training schemes in manufacturing are now few and far between, especially in the "craft" skills.

How do we fix this?

a. Colleges need to operate like employers not schools i.e. marks for attendance, involvement etc. as well as attainment. When I was an apprentice mumble mumble decades ago there were consequences if you didn't turn up, unlike most schools.

b. Colleges need to do the recruiting, then after some months find the employer not the other way round i.e. by that time they are more ready for work and can be useful much quicker. It removes most of the admin/risk for the small business and has an element of filtering i.e. the useless/disinterested ones have already been fired off the course. It's not always their fault, at 16/18/21 if you have never worked in a manufacturing environment for instance you don't know what it is like.

That is where the apprenticeship levy should be spent.

Just my 2p.

Hello David:

Making a pledge to consider non profit social motives in ones business model does not in itself guarantee a company will follow the real spirit of that pledge. Consider the zero carbon pledge by oil companies who have just been buying carbon credits to offset their production schedules.

Ketan Varia , congrats on sparking some healthy contributions from Peter Brooks , Kendo51 ,mapj1 , Andy Millar  and Roger Greenwood ; thank you all for your inputs.

Interesting to see the conversation heading towards the skills agenda, reflecting our discussion in the Manufacturing TN. With my other volunteering hat I chair the local Careers Hub Steering Group and in turn sit on the local Skills and Workforce Board and so how to meet future industry needs whilst doing right by young people is at the core of our agendas.

All of which is a cue for me to shout about this year's IET Apprentice Prize and TN Early Careers Competition - more details on our EngX page.

Agreed, and there will always be a spectrum of good and not so good businesses good and not so good employers whose actions will always speak far louder than words.