The UK has an incredible history and legacy of talent in the machinery sector – a legacy that’s defined us as a leading industrial country for years. But the number of companies in this sector has been gradually dwindling. When I started working with this industry, 25 years ago, there were big companies all around the UK, with a focus in the North of England and in the Midlands. Many of these closed and that means our talent pool is getting smaller.
Our strength lies in innovation, in creating new ideas to solve problems. But these days a lot of companies are stuck in firefighting mode. They’re not getting the headspace to look at challenges five or ten years down the line.
UK companies have produced some great innovations, but because there hasn’t been enough long-term support here, those technologies have ended up being adopted overseas. Our big opportunity is that we still have these pockets of knowledge and what we need to do is grab hold of that and find a way to bring it all together.
I see AMPI as a lighthouse – a community of high-tech businesses and entrepreneurs with new ideas. They’ve got that visionary engineering insight and it needs tying up with academics who get it and have a passion for the sector to accelerate development. We also need to encourage interest and collaboration from non-traditional machinery sectors such as cybersecurity and AI.
AMPI is also a beacon to bring finance companies, investors and government at all levels to provide the long-term support to capitalise on the innovations that are produced.
Critically, we also need to get the next generation excited. How? We’ve got to make machinery and manufacturing a focus in schools and academia. Climate change or med-tech gets attention because they’re always in the news. However, machinery for manufacturing is fundamental to these challenges, but just isn’t as visible. AMPI has the power to change that, bring in those who are on the periphery, or maybe those who don’t even realise they’re on the periphery. Particularly, if we can draw computer scientists in and get them passionate about machinery, then manufacturing might start to be seen as the next big thing.
Ultimately, we need to hear more from the younger generation. There’s so much enthusiasm among young engineers. They see a long-term future but their voices are often overlooked. To me, it’s not just about the top-down strategy. We need those ground-up voices – fresh perspectives. That’s what will shape the future.
