Manufacturing

The year may be past the halfway point, but there’s still time to catch some of the best Industrial awards and events in 2019. These events bring together professionals and experts (like you) from across the industry and they’re an excellent opportunity for sharing experiences, seeing the latest in trends and innovations as well as various chances to network. Check out below our list of events that you still can attend and you certainly will not want to miss. Matthew Dann, Thorn Baker Industrial Recruitment Director National Payroll Week: 4-6th September National Payroll Week was established to raise the profile and awareness of payroll in the UK. It helps demonstrate the impact payroll has on the UK economy through contributing towards the £4.46bn* collected through income tax and National Insurance. Celebrating payroll professionals, this week highlights that they do more than just push a button and how integral they are to organisations. We will certainly be celebrating the week with our own payroll team (look out for our posts online) will you be celebrating with yours? TCT Show: 24-26th September The TCT Show is a world-leading design-to-manufacturing event displays the latest technology in manufacturing, 3D printing, design and engineering. The TCT Show has been around for the last 20 years and brings together speakers, exhibitors and over 10,000 visitors from 60 countries. Additionally, they also host an award show on the 26th, are you one of the finalists? You can see the list of finalists here. IMHX 2019: 24-27th September IMHX is the largest event in the UK for professionals within the logistics, supply chain and materials handling industries. If you’re looking to see the newest products and services to enter the market, connect with new and existing suppliers, and stay one step ahead of the trends that are transforming the logistics industry – this is the event for you. Held at the NEC in Birmingham the event boasts 400+ exhibitors and over 16,000 visitors each year, with a host of seminars and workshops there’s definitely something for everyone. The Logistics Awards: 26th September The Logistics Awards are the Rolls Royce of awards events for logistics and supply chain operations. In association with SHD Logistics magazine, the awards have been running since 2014 and they recognise the most impressive achievements throughout the industry over the last 12 months. The finalists have already been named and there are lots of familiar names on there (good luck to all of you!) ​ PPMA Total Show: 1-3rd October PPMA Total Show 2019 is the UK’s largest event dedicated to state-of-the-art processing and packaging machinery. It comes around every three years, so there's every reason to visit this October. You'll be face-to-face with over 450 exhibitors, a host of new product launches and the latest technological innovations. Every aspect of the production line will be represented, from labelling, filling and packaging to processing, robotics, automation and industrial vision systems. Rounding off this fantastic event will be an awards event – you can have a look at the awards categories here. PrintWeek Awards: 21st October The PrintWeek Awards celebrate the power of print - the judging panel is made up of more than 20 leading print buyers and who are experts in their fields. You can look forward to being wowed by some of the awe-inspiring projects that have completed over the past 12 months. And with more than 20 PrintWeek Prisms up for grabs this year, including several new and reconfigured categories, so if you have entered the odds are stacked in your favour of promoting your prowess to clients and prospects alike. You can see last year’s winners here. CIPD Annual Conference: 6-7th November The Annual Conference and Exhibition (ACE) which is the largest and most successful HR event in the UK. Every year, it brings together thousands of HR professionals from across the world to find out and discuss the latest strategies and developments in the world of work. The exhibition, visited by more than 4000 attendees every year, features hundreds of HR and L&D providers and dozens of free learning sessions are also available over the two days. You can download the show brochure here. The events are always great opportunities to meet like-minded people from your industry. Please let us know if you (or any of your colleagues) are attending any of these events as we will be attending a selection of these ourselves. Contact your local branch today

A new report has revealed the scale and importance of the manufacturing sector to the UK's economic wellbeing. The Manufacturer highlights some of its most significant facts and statistics for you. From economic prosperity and high-value employment to research and design, it is an absolutely vital sector, and high time it was appreciated for its unrivalled contributions to UK plc. The following is adapted from the foreword to a report – The True Impact of UK Manufacturing – conducted on behalf of the MTA (Manufacturing Technologies Association) by research group Oxford Economics. The fundamental questions MTA chief executive, James Selka, wanted answered are these: if the old chestnut ‘we don’t make anything anymore!’ is true, then how does this sector account for almost half of our exports? How is it that 70% of the UK’s Business R&D is in manufacturing? Because manufacturing is less obviously present in our communities – fewer people work in the sector than in previous generations, and factories are seldom located in town centres any more – there is a tendency to believe it is a sector that has declined to the point of irrelevance. But nothing could be further from the truth: in fact, UK manufacturing extends to about a quarter of the economy. That means that the sector is essential to delivering an Industrial Strategy that can work for the benefit of the country’s prosperity. The oft-repeated ‘fact’ that manufacturing accounts for only a small proportion of UK GDP tells you more about how GDP is calculated than it does about the true impact of manufacturing within the UK economy. Our report is an attempt to tell that richer story. There are three aspects to assessing the impact of manufacturing: The direct impact: the output of businesses that are traditionally considered as manufacturers for the purposes of the GDP calculation The indirect impact: the economic effect supported in the supply chains of those businesses The induced impact: the effect of the spending by people employed directly and indirectly in manufacturing. This report estimates all three of these impacts. The first gives us the relatively familiar numbers; 9% of GDP and 2.6 million jobs (still bigger than the UK’s financial services). However, the second and third elements give us real food for thought. Including the indirect impact, manufacturing accounts for 15% of the UK economy and more than five million jobs. When we incorporate the induced impact, the figures rise still further to 23% and seven million jobs. Those last two sets of numbers give a truer picture of the importance of manufacturing to the UK economy than the first. The reasons are clear: over the past 40 years, manufacturing has increasingly outsourced activities, which used to be done in-house, in areas as diverse as logistics and catering. There are also companies, from design houses to accountancy practices, whose activity, or at least a large part of it, is predicated on serving manufacturing businesses. That output and those jobs are not normally considered as manufacturing, but they would not exist if there was no manufacturing. Any assessment of manufacturing’s importance to the UK economy must take those indirect impacts into account. Not to do so is to miss half the picture. The induced impacts are also vital to understanding the full picture of the sector. If manufacturing disappeared overnight, it would leave a huge hole in the economy as the wages of manufacturers disappeared. Over time, other industries might substitute for manufacturing, but simply buying everything from abroad would not replace the lost wealth that manufacturing creates. The country would be much poorer as a result. Today, there is an opportunity, through the Industrial Strategy, to help the UK economy grow and boost our exports by fostering manufacturing investment to take advantage of industrial digitalisation and new technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence and additive manufacturing. With the government focused on delivering that Strategy and making the changes wrought by Brexit work for, not against, the UK economy, it is vitally important to understand the economic impacts of our industries in the real world. By demonstrating the importance of manufacturing, this report does just that. Don't miss out on any of the latest industrial news, updates and jobs Subscribe here