Issues

The future of factories

mark walport Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Mark Walport previews manufacturing’s future as envisaged in the UK’s Foresight study for the sector.

The first key message is that manufacturing matters. The absolute contribution of manufacturing is 10 per cent of our GDP. It’s also extremely important for our exports; 53 per cent of our exports in 2012 came from the manufacturing industry. It’s an R&D intensive part of our activities, so about 75 per cent of total UK business R&D spend between 2000 and 2011 came from manufacturing companies.

The second key message is that the world of manufacturing is changing. The old view of manufacturing – that a widget is produced in a factory, it leaves it and that is the end – is no longer the case. It’s about packaging of services with products. For example the in-flight information you get from a Trent engine as it travels around the world.

It’s about selling technological know-how, such as the chip design of ARM. It’s about making sure that products last longer – re-manufacturing them – the sort of thing that JCB and Caterpillar do. So the value chain of manufacturing is now much broader, but it’s not clear that the current metrics really capture the whole of that value chain.

As we move to IT embedded in products, we’re going to start seeing mass personalisation of products on demand. And we’re going to begin to see a whole range of different environments in which manufacturing occurs. There will still be the classic big facilities but we’re also going to see modular facilities. The pharma industry is beginning to move in that direction.

We’re beginning to see manufacturing actually happening directly for the end-consumer with additive manufacturing at home. We’re going to see mobile manufacturing, much greater design freedom and flexibility, with design being a key part of that value chain.

With all of the changes in the natural environment, there’s the issue of sustainability. So how do we deal with shortages of water and with other mineral shortages? We’re going to have to be much more frugal with how we use our resources. There’s also the challenge that we face with the volatility in the price of resources – we’ve seen that dramatically in the case of food. The re-use, the re-manufacturing, the recycling of products is going to become ever more important.

There will probably be a need for around 800,000 new workers in the manufacturing industries. That creates a very important skills agenda. I think one of the key messages is the importance of STEM in education because this has actually got to start with enthusing young people.

The third key message is: “What are the policy implications of this future world of manufacturing?” We need to have better metrics to assess what is happening with manufacturing. It’s then about policy instruments, targeting the support, recognising that a lot of policy issues about manufacturing cross a number of government departments.

Comments are abridged from the launch of the Foresight report at the Royal Academy of Engineering.

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