̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Carlos López-Gómez

Skilling up, smart

sc604 — Mon, 04 Mar 2019 07:58:59 +0000

Five years ago, 3D printing was hailed as a technology that would fundamentally transform the way that most things are made: the hype cycle was in full gear. Breathless columns were written about a world where Star Trek-style replicators would be in every home, and no less a figure than former US President Barack Obama claimed that 3D printing would change manufacturing forever.

Fast-forward a few years and, while 3D printing has advanced rapidly, many companies still aren’t sure whether they should use it, how they should use it and what skills they need to use it effectively.

Tim Minshall, the Dr John C Taylor Professor of Innovation and Head of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), likes to use the example of 3D printing to illustrate the challenge that the East of England – and the UK at large – has with skills. With funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), he has been studying the potential impact of 3D printing on companies of all sizes, including some in the local region.

When a new technology is developed, among the first questions often asked are: how many jobs will it create as new business opportunities are realised, and how many people need to be trained to capture these opportunities? But according to Minshall, when it comes to acquiring the right skills to best exploit new technologies, those are the wrong questions.

“New technologies come along and we think we need new skills to be developed to use them when the truth is, it’s knowledge about these technologies that needs to be developed – and that’s a more difficult problem,” he says.

“If you’re a small manufacturing firm, and you’ve been doing business in a broadly similar way for decades, and then someone comes along and tells you that you need to get on board with this new technology or you’ll be left behind, how do you know whether that’s actually true? Should you buy the new solution that’s being offered to you, and if you do, do you need to retrain all your staff, or even recruit new staff, to make sure you’ve got the skills to be able to use it?”

According to Minshall, companies need to be asking who needs to know about the technology, and what they need to know.

“If a company invests in a new technology but hasn’t thought about these issues, it could be a disaster for their business,” says Minshall. “We run research projects that aim to help companies of all shapes and sizes, but in particular smaller ones, to develop the skills and capabilities they need to adapt to these technologies.”

Minshall’s colleague Professor Duncan McFarlane is working on such a project. Also funded by the EPSRC and in collaboration with the ̽��ֱ�� of Nottingham, the three-year Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project is looking to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) use digital information to enhance their manufacturing operations.

“In Cambridge and the surrounding area, there are two fundamentally different types of SMEs: the small manufacturers who make things and the solution providers. ̽��ֱ��programme aims to support both of these types of SMEs.”

One of the aims of the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project is to provide SMEs locally and across the country with the building blocks to make the right solutions for them.

“We want to get straight to the heart of the digital challenges that manufacturing SMEs are trying to overcome,” says McFarlane. “SMEs want inexpensive and easy digital manufacturing solutions: they haven’t got large specialised IT departments. There are numerous examples of companies investing into digital solutions which turn out to be no benefit at all because they haven’t been developed in line with their needs, and they haven’t got the right skills to use them effectively. And if we can engage local IT solution providers in developing these right solutions then it will be a double win!”

UK government policy is focused on improving productivity through its Industrial Strategy, which is “backing businesses to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure.”

McFarlane says that the approach he and his team are developing could help manufacturers be more effective, which could, in turn, help productivity numbers. “We’re approaching SMEs who have productivity challenges to help them understand to what extent digital or automated solutions could help them if they can afford them, and then we are helping them piece together low-cost automation solutions,” he says. “In particular, we are making use of non-industrial digital technologies – low-cost computing, WiFi cameras, voice recognition systems – because they are cheap and getting cheaper.”

While the Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project is fundamentally research, McFarlane says there is also a technology transfer aspect to their work, as they try to find the best fits between the digital requirements of different types of SMEs and the low-cost solutions under development.

In 2016, in collaboration with the government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, researchers from Cambridge’s Centre for Science, Technology & Innovation Policy (CSTI) in the IfM developed and ran a pilot project that also tried to match up skills and industries, but with a policy slant. Their case study for this ‘industrial-innovation system’ approach was Agri-Tech East, a membership organisation comprising farmers, growers, scientists and entrepreneurs in the East of England focused on innovation in agri-tech.

“We wanted to quantify what this region is really good at in order to drive innovation,” says Dr Carlos López-Gómez, who led the research and is currently Head of the Policy Links Unit at IfM. “In the East of England, we tend to focus on our strengths in science and assume that new industries will flow from that. But, quite often, innovations come from established industries. Our approach allows for a better alignment between distinctive regional capabilities and promising areas for future specialisation.”

According to López-Gómez, priorities for existing regional innovation strategies are too generic and don’t give enough consideration to existing regional economic and innovation structures, or are simply replicated from elsewhere.

For the pilot project involving Agri-Tech East, the researchers found that modern industries increasingly cut across sectors and technologies. By carrying out a comprehensive mapping exercise, they identified various opportunities in the East of England’s agri-tech sector. These were in the arable and horticultural crop sectors, across various stages of the value chain, and were in a combination of disciplines, in particular, plant sciences and engineering. Five ‘smart specialisation’ opportunities, including robotics, remote sensing and smart irrigation, were selected for further analysis.

“Claiming you are world class in everything will not be believed, and therefore in an emerging sector like agri-tech it is vital that we collectively agree where our real strengths lie,” says Martin Collison from regional consultancy firm Collison and Associates Limited, who participated in the pilot project. “ ̽��ֱ��Cambridge-led project brought together a wide cross-section of partners to identify where the East of England has particular strengths in agri-tech, and this will support our ability to attract companies and investment to the area.”

“At the end of the day, digital manufacturing and other emerging technologies are just another tool in the toolbox, but they do raise a lot of interesting business and policy issues,” says Minshall. “By looking at those issues, we realise that there are all sorts of problems that require regional and national-level solutions. One of the most important of these is how do we know what skills are needed by who and how they get them. Technology is moving so fast, and businesses want to find the areas where it will be of most benefit to their particular situation.”

Businesses need the skills to adapt to new technologies, such as 3D printing, but when they emerge fast and change quickly, how do workforces plan for the future? ̽��ֱ�� researchers are collaborating with small and medium-sized enterprises in the region to help find the best upskill strategies for driving innovation.

Technology is moving so fast... how do we know what skills are needed by who and how they get them?

Tim Minshall

Image by mohamed_hassan on Pixabay

Printer 3D technology

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Opinion: ̽��ֱ��UK's post-Brexit economy hinges on small businesses and innovation

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 06:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��decisions that the next UK government makes in response to Brexit could either add billions to the nation’s economy or risk decimating the country’s more than 264,000 manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

SMEs make up 99.9% of all businesses in the UK. They therefore have a critical role to play if the UK is to tackle the three key challenges holding the economy back, which could be further accentuated by Brexit: a large trade deficit, poor productivity growth, and low levels of SME innovation.

First, the UK’s long-running trade deficit could be worsened as European supply chains make plans to withdraw to the continent. According to a recent survey published by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, nearly half (46%) of EU businesses that work with UK suppliers are planning to move their UK operations to avoid potential Brexit tariffs.

̽��ֱ��survey also shows that severing supply chain ties travels in both directions. Nearly one-third of UK businesses that use EU suppliers are now looking for British replacements. But UK domestic supply chains are relatively weak and it is not clear whether they will be able to take advantage of emerging opportunities. For instance, only around 44% of the parts used in vehicles assembled in the UK are sourced domestically. This compares to an estimated 60% in Germany and France.

̽��ֱ��second challenge is productivity. ̽��ֱ��UK has a long tail of unproductive firms hindering supply-chain competitiveness. According to the Bank of England, a full one-third of companies have seen no increase in productivity growth since 2000. Many SMEs have weak internal R&D and managerial capabilities, making them unable to update production processes and adopt new technologies.

Third is innovation. While the scientific output of the UK is world-leading, many SMEs are unable to reap the benefits. ̽��ֱ��smaller the company is, the harder it is to innovate or capitalise on its innovations. This is because small firms’ limited resources mean an unsuccessful investment can greatly affect their finances – and even jeopardise their survival.

Opportunities abound

Yet the opportunity for SME growth post-Brexit is huge, given proper investment. Research commissioned by the CBI, the UK’s main employers’ group, estimates that strengthening supply chains could add £30 billion to the UK economy and create more than 500,000 jobs by 2025. In the car industry alone, UK suppliers could take a much bigger share of the market and reduce the UK trade deficit by £4 billion, according to the Automotive Council.

It is welcome that the government’s Industrial Strategy green paper recognises that the success of UK industry depends on the presence of a “vigorous ecology” of smaller companies supporting major players. ̽��ֱ��need to support this “ecology of suppliers” cannot be overestimated.

Beating the competition

Some of the UK’s overseas manufacturing competitors, such as Japan and Germany, have long recognised the barriers faced by SMEs and have established well-funded systems to overcome some of these constraints.

Japan has a regional network of 60 “Kohsetsushi centres” which support the development of its industrial SMEs, providing them with testing and research services. Some of these centres have been operating for more than a century. For other sectors of its economy, such as agriculture and health, they have hundreds more similar centres. In 2016 they received a combined funding of around US$1.5 billion and hosted more than 12,000 researchers – all working to help SMEs innovate.

Similarly, Germany has 69 Fraunhofer institutes with 24,000 staff and €2.2 billion of annual funding, along with a plethora of other institutions to support SME innovation. These include the German Federation of Industrial Research Associations or AiF, which has been operating for more than 60 years. It encompasses 100 industrial research associations serving around 50,000 businesses, mostly SMEs. In 2014, AiF disbursed around €500m (£440m) of public funding for innovative SME projects.

These institutions help SMEs innovate by providing and funding a number of technical services such as access to the latest equipment and laboratories that SMEs could not otherwise afford as well as technical advice, analysis and testing services to ensure product quality and compliance with international standards, workforce training required for the introduction of new technologies and guidance to access innovation funds.

̽��ֱ��UK has made a similar move in this direction with its Catapult programme, launched in 2011. Catapult centres fill an important gap in the innovation system but, as a review commissioned by the government recognised, the UK is still “playing catch-up” with other countries. In particular, the Catapult centres cannot by themselves fulfil all the functions required to support SME productivity and innovation because they still lack the scale and geographical coverage found in other countries that have developed institutional capacity over many years.

What the international experience tells us is that no one programme or institution is likely to help manufacturing SMEs overcome all the barriers they face. Instead, what some of the most successful countries have done is to ensure that the particular needs of SMEs are systematically taken into account across government-supported initiatives.

Action to nurture SME innovation in the UK and address gaps in the institutional support infrastructure is therefore necessary for the nation’s future industrial success. A long-term approach is also required to build institutions with the size, coverage and financial flexibility to reach SMEs in all UK regions. Anything less runs the risk of damaging the health of the UK economy for years to come.

Carlos López-Gómez, Head of the Policy Links unit at the Institute for Manufacturing, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

In this piece for ̽��ֱ��Conversation, Carlos López-Gómez from Cambridge's Institute for Manufacturing, discusses the role that small and medium-sized businesses might play in a post-Brexit economy.

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