In 2013 The Policy Exchange published David Willetts’ paper on Eight Great Technologies. This emerged in parallel to an exercise by the European Commission to identify Six Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) as part of the Horizon 2020 R&D programme. One of Willetts’ eight was Robotics and Autonomous Systems which was not explicitly highlighted by the… Read more »

The forces of global competition are accelerating the pace of new product introduction. As a result OEMs are expecting higher standards of performance from their supply chain. This often leads to a strategic appraisal of suppliers by OEMs to identify the suppliers which are critical to their new product strategy to ensure that they have… Read more »

The success of car making in the UK is now widely recognised with the stream of good news stories continuing into 2015. The situation in the UK supply chain has not been so widely publicised but a recent report from the Automotive Council by Phil Davies at BIS helps put this right. Davies concludes that… Read more »

This year Bosch, the global electronics firm who are a major player in the automotive supply chain, are recruiting nearly 80 engineers in the UK as part of a much larger worldwide expansion. A spokesman explains that as connectivity expands in every business sector from mobility to industrial technology, the importance of software does too…. Read more »

Advanced Manufacturing is a major competitive strength in the European Union according to a study published in February 2015 by the Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) Observatory. The Observatory’s role is to provide national and regional policymakers with information on KETs for European competitiveness by comparing the EU with North America and East Asia. The Observatory… Read more »

Support for the UK transport equipment supply chain now includes the UK Rail Supply Group which has been given £500,000 to help rail suppliers secure new business. £38bn is being invested in the UK rail infrastructure over the next fifteen years. Many other countries have similar investment plans and so there is a series of… Read more »

An important success factor in successful New Product Introduction is the attitude of consumers in the target market. The internet represents new ways of informing potential buyers and stimulating purchase decisions. To make the most of the net knowledge of attitudes in the target group is vital. Mckinsey reports that in China there are 632… Read more »

The process approach underpins a vast amount of contemporary business management and strategy whether this is the improvement of existing business processes or the introduction of new processes in support of innovative products and/or services. The Audit Standard VDA 6.3 is a standardised procedure for the conduct of process audits to assess organisational performance and… Read more »

Value added is part of the productivity ratio and productivity matters because growth in productivity is the only sustainable way of increasing GDP. It is widely recognised that the UK has shown some puzzling trends in productivity since 2008. This is now seen as part of a much broader global situation. According to the Conference… Read more »

A year ago the Department of Education published an important report on 3D printers in schools and their potential uses in the curriculum. The aim was to find out whether this technology offered new opportunities for the teaching of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Improvements in this area are important in terms of increasing… Read more »