BAE Systems, the defence company which is among the UK’s biggest manufacturers, has appointed a 23-year-old engineer as “entrepreneur in residence” to help promote a drive to boost collaboration and innovation.

George Edwards  is charged with encouraging other engineers in the business – which makes military hardware from submarines and missiles to warships and jet fighters – to be more open to new ideas from the likes of Microsoft and Amazon as well as small start-ups. The photo above shows the inside of BAE’s submarine factory in Barrow, Cumbria.

While Edwards is just one among the 22,000 engineers and technical staff who work for BAE in Britain, the move indicates how even in big and conservatively managed businesses intriguing new opportunities can open for young people. Made Here Now aims to highlight such possibilities.

A key attraction to BAE of Edwards – and which marks him out from the many young graduates and apprentices in the rest of the business – is that he started his own technology enterprise when he was 17 and still at school. Edwards runs the eight-person Make Sense for roughly half the working week, with the rest spent at BAE.

BAE says it hopes that Edwards’ experience at the start-up can bring an “outsider’s perspective” to developing technical ideas. Edwards says: “I am looking…[at external businesses]…that may have great technology that we [BAE] can use. We could form a link with such companies through partnerships or making an investment.

“My role…entails first identifying businesses where we could form these sorts of ventures and then developing ideas for how the partnership could work.”

Edwards’ appointment has emerged as BAE comes under pressure to make the most of its wide range of technologies and to become more cost-effective in using them in work for its mainly government-owned customers. Defence budgets globally are being squeezed as part of spending constraints.

To help in its technology effort, BAE is a huge provider of engineers and technical staff. In 2018 BAE recruited roughly 500 apprentices and 300 graduates. It has some 2,000 apprentices and 500 graduates in training in the UK – where it employs just over 34,000 people in all disciplines, comprising about 40 per cent of its global workforce.

Nick Cunningham of Agency Partners, an investment research group specialising in aerospace and defence, says that over the next few years BAE is expected to boost its spending on new technologies to give itself more of a competitive edge.

The spending is likely to come in disciplines such as “stealth” systems (hardware and software to make military equipment invisible to radar), autonomous aircraft, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. In all these areas, BAE might find it hard to create new ideas purely with its own resources.

As a result, says Cunningham, bringing in an outsider such as Edwards “could be one part of the effort to help the company to take on new thinking and move ahead of rivals”.

The appointment has been orchestrated by Nigel Whitehead, a long-serving BAE executive who at the start of 2018 started as the company’s first chief technology officer. Whitehead says: “Technology and innovation sit at the heart of our business…attracting and developing diverse talent is vitally important to encourage new and innovative ways of working and embrace disruptive and emerging technologies.”

Whitehead’s effort to promote innovation must fit in with BAE’s generally conservative approach. Defence companies are often reluctant to collaborate on technology with non-military businesses on secrecy grounds, as well as special factors related to equipment reliability.

One of the biggest projects BAE has underway is an advanced combat aircraft called Tempest, which would be flown by a pilot or operate autonomously as a sophisticated drone. The vehicle – which could cost as much as £2bn to bring to production and see service in the 2030s – would use new ideas from novel structural materials to “smart” weapons guided by artificial intelligence.

Edwards is working for BAE for three days a week, as part of a 30-strong team engaged in “engineering product management” reporting to Whitehead. The rest of the time he is at Make Sense where he is chief executive.

Make Sense (formerly Gas Sense) concentrates on collecting and analysing data from manufacturing operations and linking the data to the IT systems, for instance, to help connect manufacturing operations with sales and distribution as part of the “internet of things”. Its clients include several big consumer goods makers, such as the US cosmetics group Coty.

According to Nicole Humphrey, founder of Direct Talent Source, a recruitment firm specialising in engineering, many technology businesses are more interested in taking on people such as Edwards with a background that “might not fit into their traditional job profiles” to bring in fresh ideas and facilitate innovation.

Discussing BAE, Edwards says: “Even with some of the world’s leading engineers and technologists within the business, there’s always opportunity to see what other innovative technology companies out there are developing that might be of help. For the world’s pioneering tech leaders you have to look to companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. These sorts of companies are a key source of innovation and it’s important for us to look to the outside world to find new ideas.”

Part of Edwards’ career path involved a decision while still at school not to go to university. “I knew if I went to university, I’d find it very difficult to run my business as well,” Edwards says. “I love technology and I love business and I love manufacturing. So I decided to concentrate on this.”

Edwards had started Make Sense on the back of ideas while studying design and technology at King’s School, Canterbury, a public boarding school. He says he was “enormously fortunate” to be at a top-rated school with the money to pay for necessary equipment and teachers. Graham Swindley, who taught Edwards, says that at a young age he showed “enthusiasm for solutions that worked and dogged determination to make them work”.

On the wider effort to foster more of an interest in technology and engineering among school children, Edwards says: “I think an enormous amount has been achieved in the past five years in terms of promoting engineering within schools, through companies’ own initiatives…and [government] programmes. People talk a lot more about engineering and manufacturing than they used to which shows that some of the promotional efforts are beginning to take effect.”

(The article appeared in Made Here Now in 2018.)

The 3Cs – code, collaboration and capability – are the keys to separating the winners and losers in global manufacturing.

Code describes the software important in linking networks of products. Collaboration covers the relationships connecting companies with suppliers, developers and users. Capability encompasses employee skills.

The 3Cs grabbed attention at the latest in a series of annual “manufacturing summits” held by the Financial Times. At the latest gathering, held in London in October 2018, the topics for discussion included autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, the internet of things and the challenges of Brexit.

Pictured is a taxi coming off the production line at a UK factory run by Chinese-owned London Electric Vehicle Company.The plant shows how collaboration between different businesses can lead to useful benefits.

First, consider code – the lines of software that act as the “glue” between interlinked machines. The key resource here is data. Every time a manufacturing process takes place, or a finished product interacts with the outside world, an item of data is created.

In the past, most manufacturers have failed either to collect, store or process the data- in many cases they’ve done none of these things.  Now, the position is changing as businesses realise that the data – backed up by the software that keeps track of it and uses the data to make judgements – can help them to improve.

“Everyone [in manufacturing] is a software company – it’s just that some don’t know it yet,” was one phrase heard during the FT conference.

Extracting data from manufacturing processes can help raise revenues and profits 

Driverless cars offer examples of where data and products connect. An autonomous car interacting with other vehicles and objects around it is an illustration of the much discussed “internet of things” – where the things happen to be large, expensive and on wheels.

Sarah-Jane Williams, director of smart mobility at the Ford carmaker,  says people will have to stop thinking about “user-optimised journeys”, and become accustomed to “system optimised journeys” where software takes charge. Ford aims to generate revenues from the software by teaming up with other businesses – such as public authorities or other entities that may evolve to manage driverless cars – which have a part to play in managing the cities of the future.

More prosaically, software and networks are important for many manufacturers that wish to use their production machines more effectively. For instance, a company operating machine tools can link its machines with software that monitors the equipment to generate maintenance schedules and look for faults. Manish Chawla, general manager for global industrial products at the IBM computer and data company, told the FT event:  “A lot of companies are sitting on a goldmine [of data].”

Networks and collaboration are crucial to using data more effectively, says Manish Chawla of IBM (left). Photo: FT 

The second of the Cs – collaboration –can help companies to use and share data more effectively. Kone, the Finland-based maker of escalators and lifts, is one of several companies with which IBM has formed a partnership.

Whenever a person steps on or off an escalator, an item of data is generated. If this is collected, the software reveals useful information about travel patterns, perhaps inside a railway station.

If this information is linked to sensors recording associated “people movements” (for instance about people going in and out of doors) then a fuller picture of life within the building structure can be obtained. That helps the operator of the building to manage key aspects such as energy provision and security. Schneider – the French equipment manufacturer which also has a large business offering energy management services – is another partner in the IBM/Kone relationship.

Information is all around us – many manufacturers need to learn to use it better

IBM, in its work on the internet of things, can point to its collaboration with several other firms. Examples are the Swedish capital goods company Sandvik, where the partnership is geared to creating maintenance schedules for mining machines, and Cemex, the Mexico based building materials producer. Here the data harvesting gives Cemex insights into how customers use hardware such as cement mixers, feeding information back that is useful in developing both new machines and materials.

But collaboration goes beyond simply using data more effectively.

Malte Lohan, director-general of Orgalime, a Brussels-based trade body representing Europe’s engineering industry, told the conference: “Invariably you find that innovation can be maximised through partnerships [between companies].”

Sharing ideas and insights leads to better products and solutions, says Malte Lohan of Orgalime. Photo: FT 

Steve Fisher, chief executive of Novelis, the US-based aluminium producer owned by the Indian industrial group Hindalco, elaborated on how this can work. He discussed some of the many partnerships his company has with businesses around the world – including many car makers that use aluminium to supplement the steel that most cars are predominantly made from.

A specific example is the link between Novelis and London Electric Vehicle Company, a UK-based company owned by Geely, a Chinese carmaker. LEVC is manufacturing a new generation of electric car in a £325m factory in Coventry, UK.  Some of the first models of these cars are seeing service in Britain as the latest iteration of the famous London “black cab” taxi.

Through the link with LEVC, Fisher said Novelis is learning about how the aluminium structure for the new London taxis can be bonded to the plastics-based composite panels from which – in a relatively novel departure for the automotive industry -a large part of the vehicles’ bodies are made. “We are getting some unique insights,”  Fisher said.

The final C – the capabilities of employees – stands out as another key theme.

The skills of people working in manufacturing are central to the sector’s progress  

Without the correct skills people working in manufacturing – and the firms that employ them – will be unable to capitalise on the opportunities that new technologies have to offer. Making manufacturing as a career more attractive to young people -seen by many as more receptive to taking in new ideas than older ones – is a big preoccupation for many industrial companies. This aim is behind a number of industry and technology initiatives, among them the UK’s Made Here Now project.

Fisher of Novelis gave a specific example of how his business is trying to tackle the issue. This is through a global competition, organised by the US charity FIRST and sponsored by several businesses including the aluminium producer, to encourage students to develop new generations of robots.

“By getting involved with this competition we hope to create a promising talent pool and nurture the next generation of top industry minds,” said Fisher.

While Juergen Maier, chief executive of the UK arm of Siemens, the German engineering group, recognises the importance of such projects, he says that frequently educationalists and politicians divert too many resources into efforts to tempt young people into engineering and manufacturing, and fail to do enough to educate people already working in these fields in new thinking.

Juergen Maier of Siemens makes a point at the FT conference. Photo: FT 

“Upskilling [of the existing workforce] is as big a challenge as the problems [in attracting people] at entry level,” Maier told the summit. The goal for many manufacturers must be to tackle all the three Cs simultaneously and so increase their chances of success.

By Peter Marsh

A version of this article can be seen on the website operated by Gideon Franklin, a corporate  finance advisory firm specialising in helping Japanese industrial companies to become more global. For a Japanese translation of the story see here.   

 

Eddie Davies, who has died at the age of 72, was a resolute and imaginative businessman who made his mark in three seemingly separate areas: electronics, football and cultural institutions linked to science and technology.

In electronics Davies will be remembered for his key role in building up the Isle of Man-based Strix from a fledgling business in a niche technical area into a world leader. Davies is pictured above with the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and John Incledon (centre).

In football he was instrumental in turning the illustrious Bolton Wanderers Football Club into a key force in the English Premier league, arresting several years of decline. In the arts and sciences, Davies’s support through generous gifts was immensely important to organisations such as the V&A Museum in London and Kew Gardens. He is pictured below at a Bolton match.

Strix is a British success story. It has used specialised knowhow in metals technology to become the world leader in the quirky yet important field of kettle thermostats, devices that cut off power when electric kettles boil and stop the devices becoming a safety hazard.

The company’s key invention is a modification of a technical device used in the 18^th century by British craftsmen to make clock springs, later used during World War Two to create electric thermostats to stop flying suits overheating. Thanks in large part to Davies’s acumen, these odd beginnings were fashioned into the base for a global business. Like many mid-sized engineering companies in Britain, Strix is a “hidden champion” in a product field so narrow and specialised that it’s ignored by the multinational giants.

In the 1970s kettles were predominantly employed in the English-speaking world for making tea. Today the items are just as likely to be used – in places such as China and Russia – for boiling water for soup or coffee. Every day it is estimated that 1bn people turn on kettles containing Strix’s control devices.

1bn people a day are said to use a kettle containing a Strix control.

After just over 20 years running the company, Davies sold his controlling stake in Strix in 2005, netting more than £100m. Selling out to a private equity owner was the first step to transforming Strix from what was essentially a family company to what is now a business quoted on London’s AIM stock exchange . Strix has a market capitalisation of some £300m and more than 800 employees.

The company continues to operate in much the same way as under Davies’ stewardship. It keeps its HQ, key factory for precision engineering and main R&D operations in the British Isles (on the Isle of Man). It has a determinedly global approach. Like many companies in electronics Strix  uses China for the bulk of its manufacturing. Strix’s main plant is in the southern city of Guangzhou, which opened in 1997. According to a 2018 brokers’ report: “Strix should enjoy steady top line expansion. The company demonstrates product superiority and integrity in what appears a growth market. Strix’s leading [approximately] 38 per cent global market share tends to confirm product superiority while we identify ample scope for the market to grow.”

Many of the kettle makers that Strix sells to are Chinese

Davies was generous to me as a journalist in giving insights and opinions on what was going on in both football and business. He had a courteous (often reserved)  manner though could be fiery on occasions when something annoyed him, for instance referring decisions in soccer matches that he disagreed with. Davies wasn’t given to flamboyant gestures. He did nothing to make himself appear a public figure, using words sparingly in most conversations and generally avoiding media interviews. This policy ensured for many years he barely figured in newspaper articles (apart from some pieces in the Financial Times mainly written by me).

I first met Davies in the early 2000s when after much effort I went to the Isle of Man to see him as the head of Strix. Working at the FT I’d heard about Strix. It seemed an intriguing company. But Strix was notoriously private and difficult to find out about. Luckily Davies opened doors.  On the Isle of Man trip I met some fascinating characters and learned some aspects to how the company worked.

Strix’s controls have revolutionised the kettle industry

Strix had been set up in 1982 on the Isle of Man by John Taylor, who while a skilled inventor lacked the management capabilities needed to run an expanding company. Taylor’s father, Eric, was another clever technician with a bent for innovation.  He had set up an earlier electric controls company – Otter Controls, which continues to operate from Buxton, Derbyshire – from which Strix later separated triggering a family row.  In 1984 John Taylor recruited Davies – an engineer who knew about business – as chief executive. Taylor stepped aside to become the company’s chief scientist.

Davies always said he was grateful to the education he’d had that combined – highly unusually – a lot of technical insights into both physics and accountancy. Davies said of himself: “I’m an engineer who can read balance sheet “. This combination served him well over the time when he and Taylor in tandem built up Strix’s business.

When running Strix, Davies said the model for Strix’s growth was the US’s  Intel – the world’s biggest maker of microchips. While kettles are less glamorous than semiconductors, Strix has attempted to emulate the Californian company’s approach to protecting its technical secrets and branding. “The comparison with Intel is appropriate, as many of our customers in the developing markets often put stickers on their packaging saying that there are Strix controls inside [to differentiate themselves from others using competing or counterfeit controls],” Davies told me in 2004. Strix’s gross margins at the time were 40-50 per cent, very high for an engineering business and only just below those of the US giant.  A company’s gross profit is its sales, minus costs of production, excluding overheads and research and development expenses.

Strix aims to move increasingly into coffee makers, reducing the focus on tea drinkers

Helped by Davies, I went to see the company’s small factory in Ramsey, Isle of Man, where the “blades” for Strix’s kettle thermostats are made in a secret process. I pieced together details of the high-tech bi- and tri-metallic strips contained in these blades. They are made using home-produced machines using procedures almost impossible to write into an engineering manual and tantamount to a black art. The company continues to operate in Ramsey, having resisted the temptation to switch this key element of its production to its main Guangzhou plant. It seems that Strix follows still the philosophy laid down by Davies:   “We make the blades … on the Isle of Man and then ship them to China. We would never produce them in China because the risk of competitors finding out about the technology would be too great.”

In a series of later emails Davies explained that the key to the thermostats is a sudden “snapping ” action linked to the blades’ reaction to heat. This action causes the thermostats to behave as an electric switch, so shutting off power once the kettle has boiled. According to Davies, if the muscles of a human body were to emulate the capabilities of a Strix blade, the average person would be able to lift a 100-tonne truck. This graphic description made its way into The New Industrial Revolution: Consumers, Globalisation and the End of Mass Production, a book I wrote about global industry that was published in 2012. Davies was among the guests at the Royal Academy of Engineering reception to mark the publication. He is pictured below with John Incledeon (centre), Lakshmi Mittal and Peter Marsh.

After visiting the Isle of Man, and after I’d also seen Strix’s plant in China, during a trip 2004, Davies and I struck up a good relationship. We used to meet regularly in London for lunch or dinner. While Davies favoured the Savoy Grill, I reciprocated by taking him, on FT expenses, to pleasant but less grand establishments. Davies invited my son Jonny and I to see many Arsenal v Bolton matches in the years from around 2005 when Bolton were riding high in the Premiership. At these matches, I also got to know Davies’s wife Sue – every bit as keen a Bolton fan as Davies, and in her private life a notable horse breeder.  Davies – who was born near Bolton – had taken over ownership of the club in 2003 having already been a director. During the time I was watching Bolton I grew to admire the team’s battling style and refusal to buckle. Phil Gartside was the chairman and made all the public statements about the club – something he seemed fond of doing. Sam Allardyce was the shrewd and highly successful manager who had the great ability to get the best out of the players. Davies was the behind the scenes man who provided a lot of the advice and ideas – plus a considerable sum of money – to keep the club at a high level in a tough league.

Between 2004 and 2007, when Allardyce left, Bolton finished in 8th, 6th,8th and 7th positions in the Premiership, which was very creditable for a little fancied club with relatively slim resources (although with a fantastic history). During the 13 years to 2016 when Davies owned the club, Bolton could afford, thanks to his largesse, star players including Youri Djorkaeff, Jay Jay Okocha, Nicolas Anelka (pictured below) and Fernando Hierro. Referring in a typically wry way to Bolton’s stellar league ranking, Davies once said to me, at a time when the team was doing particularly well, “We’re suffering nosebleeds up here!” Bolton’s run of success ended, however, in 2012 when the club was relegated to the second-tier Championship league.

When Davies eventually passed on the club to new owners, he wrote off personal loans of around £175m. The sales process was fraught with problems. Davies wanted to find a group of owners who would look after the club’s long-term interests. In the end he transferred the club (essentially for a negative sum) to a consortium headed by ex-player Dean Holdsworth which he thought had the right ingredients. Davies told me after completion: “What a relief. At least I can sleep nights now!”But a few months later, Bolton suffered a further blow, going down another tier to League One, though bouncing back into the Championship a year later. The Bolton Wanderers’ Supporters Trust said after his death: “Davies was BWFC through and through and he was pivotal to the success of our club in recent times.” One fan told the Bolton News: “Under Davies’s ownership we saw the best time to be a Bolton fan. May he rest in peace.” Davies is survived by Sue and a son and daughter.

The last text I got from Davies was in May 2018 after a dramatic 3-2 win over Notts Forest enabled Bolton to stave off at the last minute yet another relegation and remain in the Championship. After I’d sent a text seconds after the final whistle congratulating Bolton on this escape, Davies replied, in a terse, Davies-like way that summed up the situation perfectly: “Bloody fantastic finish.”

Davies had a bloody fantastic life for which he will be long remembered.

Peter Marsh

A Made Here Now analysis of university data shows how engineering has fallen back in the pecking order of top subjects, amid fresh worries on skills shortages. We also shed light on the relative attractiveness of individual engineering disciplines.

Innovation in manufacturing is greatly prized. It can occur in a range of ways. The article focuses on the different strategies – EVOLUTION, INVENTION, COLLABORATION, CUSTOMISATION and CONSOLIDATION – employed by five British manufacturers in varied industries to produce spectacular improvements in products or processes. The picture alongside this article provides an example of  innovation in action. It shows a virtual reality display at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Rotherham, part of the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult, being used by engineers to create new materials for the nuclear industry. Innovation can happen almost anywhere – as is illustrated in the photo below taken at a school in the Netherlands and showing a desk-top version of a 3D printing machine.(This article originally appeared in Made Here Now on June 14 2018.)  

EVOLUTION: 3D printing revolutionises the humble bearing

In a workshop on the outskirts of Oxford, a group of engineers clusters around a complex looking machine, working out how to improve one of the world’s most widespread manufacturing activities. Their focus is a 3D printing machine making key parts of industrial bearings – components that enable rotation in products ranging from cars to chemical works.

The world contains enormous numbers of these bearings, ranging in size from giant assemblies used in large industrial machines to tiny devices within miniature motors. They add up to a huge industry with estimated sales of £60bn a year, dominated by multinationals including SKF of Sweden, Germany’s Schaeffler and NSK of Japan.

One of the minnows is Bowman, a UK company headed by Paul Hancock, a seasoned engineer with a lifelong interest in new ideas.  Hancock, a lively 80-year-old who retains an enthusiasm for thinking differently, is pictured below. He says of the multiple projects he is working on: “If everything works out as we plan, we could double or triple our sales in the next few years.”

Most new engineering ideas develop from principles that have been understood for years – sometimes centuries. Industrial bearings – unsung devices that make the world go round – are one good example.

Virtually every piece of consumer or industrial hardware involving rotation contains bearings to reduce frictional losses and save energy. Some of the first bearings were made from wood and used 2,000 years ago in ships built by the Romans

Bearings have changed gradually over the years without deviating  much from the original concepts. But now, aided by a small technical team, Hancock has looked afresh at how to make important components in bearings, called cages.

Cages house the rollers (sometimes replaced by balls) that usually feature in bearings and hold them in position, adjacent to a moving shaft. In Bowman’s new design, the cages are made from tough engineering plastic rather than metal. Small metal inserts embedded in the cages withstand the rubbing of the rollers generated by rotation and so absorb the loads carried by the overall structure.

“We examined how cages had evolved over the years and set out to improve them with a mix of basic engineering principles and new technology,” says Hancock.

The crucial change here has been the adoption in recent years of 3D printing, also called additive manufacturing. In 3D printing, machines based on advances in electronic, laser technology and chemistry build up complex shapes from plastic or metal.

The process offers new ways to make parts in limited volumes, greatly reducing the lag between design and production. It can also provide a way to make components using materials or in shapes that would otherwise be impossible to fabricate.

Bowman’s new design is the result of focusing on relatively small areas of the bearings industry that are of little interest to the dominant players. The niche where Hancock sees the biggest immediate potential is in split bearings.

In these devices, the cages are made as two or more separate components that can be snapped together before use to make the complete ring. The design lends itself to the sort of big, bulky bearings seen in fields such as rolling mills in steel factories. Because few applications require such heavy bearings, the cages for split bearings are made in small volumes but to many variations. These characteristics, according to Hancock and his team, made them suitable for an effort at manufacturing with 3D printing, with the help of a new design.

Bowman’s  new venture has been expensive. The company has spent £650,000 on two 3D printing machines – made by Eos of Germany and Hewlett Packard of the US – together with ancillary equipment. But now Hancock feels the design has developed sufficiently to make it suitable for general use – not just in split bearings but potentially in more standard types of bearing too.

“The new cage design brings many advantages,” Hancock says. “Making [metal] cages in the normal way involves the use of stamping tools to create the final metal shape. In our design, no tooling is needed. While making cages in the conventional manner takes 6 -18 weeks from design to production, with 3D printing we can cut the time just two days.”

The design also packs 40 per cent more rollers into the same size of cage. Bearings made this way last longer, use less energy and are easier to assemble.

The new ideas have generated a lot of interest among customers, says Hancock. However, he is aware that to persuade a significant number of companies to switch to the Bowman design is likely to be hard, especially since 3D-printed products often cost more than those based on older technologies. Even so, he expects the new designs will lead to a big jump in Bowman’s annual sales, which this year are expected to be about £10m. Staff numbers could, he says, double in the next few years from the 40 currently employed in Bowman’s development base in Oxfordshire and in a manufacturing unit near Dudley in the Midlands.

INVENTION: Laser focus on cyclists’ safety

While Bowman rethought the principles behind a product that has existed for centuries, Emily Brooke came up with a completely new idea. It emerged from a four-year spell at Brighton University in southern England, where she studied product design.

“I wanted to discover the biggest problem facing cyclists, and find a way to solve it,” says Brooke, pictured below, and who at 32 is at the other end of the age spectrum to Hancock but has a similar thirst for new ideas.

After discussions with a range of people – cycling enthusiasts, psychologists and safety experts – Brooke came up with the answer. “Almost 80 cent of cycling accidents are caused by a vehicle driver pulling out and hitting a moving bike, with driver unaware of its presence.” If she could find a way to warn drivers of the bike’s approach in a way that conventional cycle lights failed to do, this this would be a real advance.

While the engineering presented a challenge, before she left Brighton in 2011 Brooke had created the basic design for a product – later called Laserlight – that shone an image of a bike onto the road. The image was visible six metres ahead, advertising the rider’s presence. In 2012 Brooke, pictured above, started her company, Beryl (formerly called Blaze),  in a small workshop in London.

But there was more to Laserlight than just the design. Making it was extremely hard, requiring 180 components, many of them sourced from China, with final assembly subcontracted to companies in the UK or Asia. The system had to be extremely rugged and able to withstand heavy rain, for example; it had to be close to 100 per cent reliable; and it had to look good.

Brooke says: “In our first year of production, I made five trips to China [to check out production]. While the design and development of our products is done in London, components come from a number of places. We use Japanese batteries, some electronic parts are Japanese or Korean, the laser is German and some of the optical components are Taiwanese.”

Brooke is particularly proud of the Laserlight’s aluminium casing. “It’s a 13-step process – casting, post production, a bit of CNC [machining], diamond-cut edges – beautiful but complex,” Brooke says.

Brooke’s approach may be partly the result of the mix of academic topics she’s studied. “At school I liked science. I was regarded as being unusual because I was a girl who was good at maths and physics. But I also loved art. I was always interested in finding ways to be creative.”

She started a physics degree at Oxford University but dropped out after a year, studied fine art at a Wiltshire college and then enrolled at Brighton. Brooke also squeezed in short spells at the Politecnico di Milano School of Design and Babson College in Massachusetts, where she studied entrepreneurship.

The Laserlight remains Beryl’s core product, selling for about £125, and shipped to more than 60 countries. The company has moved into other fields of lighting for bikes and recorded sales of just over £1m in 2017/18. Beryl has received £9m in investments and employs 25 people, mostly involved with design, development and marketing.

One coup was a contract with the London’s bike sharing scheme sponsored by Santander under which Laserlights and other Beryl lighting products are fitted on all of the scheme’s 12,000 bikes, manufactured by the UK cycle maker Pashley.

In a bold move, Beryl has set out to become a force in “internet of things” technology – using what it calls its “future data platform”. This will amount to a small gadget fitted to the bike backed up by powerful computing systems.

London company Beryl sets out to make cycling safer

The platform will gather data from sources including satellite mapping systems, sensors on lampposts or new generations of driverless cars and instruments on the bike itself such as accelerometers and atmospheric sensors. In this way the bike will be turned into a moving collector and transmitter of information, capturing insights into such things as accidents and near misses, the incidences of potholes and changes in environmental pollution.

“We want to use connectivity to monitor overall journey quality and create a ‘smart bike’,” says Brooke.

COLLABORATION: Surgical robots built on a “blending” approach

Almost all breakthroughs require input from different contributors, either spread around the world or concentrated in a small area. But few businesses demonstrate this better than Cambridge-based CMR Surgical, which makes medical robots – machines that help surgeons carry out intricate laparoscopic (keyhole) procedures in hard-to-reach areas of the body. In time medical robots could bring big changes to routine surgical procedures of the sort seen here.

 

CMR’s collaborative approach to developing new ideas is in evidence at many other Cambridge businesses, often thanks to the influence of the late Gordon Edge, a notable entrepreneur from the city.

The robotics company has emerged from the confluence of science and business thinking that has made Cambridge one of the world’s leading centres for technology-based enterprises. Four of the five people who founded CMR in 2014 worked for Sagentia, one of several big technology consultancies in Cambridge that specialise in pooling ideas and turning them into commercial ventures, run either as start-ups or within existing groups.

Sagentia is among four consultancies in Cambridge – the others being Cambridge Consultants, TTP and the technology arm of PA Consulting – either set up or strongly influenced by Edge, an entrepreneur who died in 2013 but left his mark on many local businesses.

 

Robots sensitive enough to pick up oranges are among the devices developed at Cambridge Consultants 

In 1983 Edge set out his approach: “The idea that someone comes along and invents, say, a jet engine and that everything follows from this is just a lot of eyewash. This may once have been the chain of events, but it is no longer so. Innovation is a management tool and a team effort. If only people would accept this, we would all be a lot better off.” He followed this principle at all his companies, forming teams of scientists and engineers that worked across multiple disciplines, developing new concepts by blending different technologies.

CMR pursues a similar strategy. Martin Frost, chief executive, who previously had the same role at Sagentia, explains: “We [the founders] all worked in different areas of technology and business. Along the way we identified medical robots as a field where we could bring together different disciplines to create a product significantly better than what exists now.”

Key technologies behind CMR’s Versius robot system –due to be unveiled later this year – include electronics, software, materials, sensors and biomedicine. The company is backed by nearly £40m in investments and has a staff of about 190, two thirds of them working in development and with an average age of 30. Two of the engineering team, Christopher Roach and Nikki Phoolchund, are in the photo below.

Rather than working autonomously, medical robots are guided by surgeons to perform jobs that are difficult or impossible using normal medical interventions. Mark Slack, head of gynaecology at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, and the only member of the five-strong group behind CMR not to have worked at Sagentia, points to the benefits of keyhole surgery. Due to much smaller incisions, patients recover faster, while surgeons can work in tricky areas of the body. “But [such non-invasive surgery] is difficult. Many surgeons can’t do it. So medical robots are needed to help them,” says Slack.

While full details of Versius have yet to be released, it is a set of mechanical arms and instruments that surgeons and other medical staff can operate using a console by the patient’s bedside. “We feel we can offer something new to hospitals – a small, versatile, agile machine – that can bring the advantages of laparoscopic procedures to more people,” says Frost.

Versius can guide instruments through “ports” measuring just 5mm in diameter. While most components of the machine will come from suppliers around the world, assembly will be carried out at CMR’s Cambridge HQ.

The company will by not have the field to itself. Several other larger players in medical robots are already in the market, with the stiffest competition likely from Intuitive Surgical of the US, maker of an established robot called da Vinci.

Nevertheless, Frost says he hopes to be recording global sales of “several hundred” machines a year within a few years, with each system likely to cost several million pounds. If CMR reaches its sales targets, its employee numbers could double in the next three years, says Frost.

CUSTOMISATION: Engineering new ways to make an impact

Chris Augur has a simple way of explaining the items his company manufactures. “Almost nothing conforms to the last product.” Augur is managing director of Yorkshire-based Stage One, which makes a bewildering range of objects from revolving stages for Wagner operas to sculptures to enliven buildings and outdoor spaces. With customers including pop groups, architects and theatres, Stage One employs people with skills in design, project management and construction. Augur is seen here at Stage One’s sprawling site at a disused airfield.

The company created a number of complex pieces of equipment for the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, including the design pictured in this article  that produced a spectacular pyrotechnic effect at the games’ opening ceremony.

Manufacturing lies at the heart of the business, with almost two-thirds of the 185-strong staff working in various area of production, but Stage One’s approach is guided by the bespoke nature of its products. Naturally, the creativity that this requires must be tempered with business discipline. “The people we employ must be happy to work with systems and procedures that allow us to take on a complex brief and perform this to the satisfaction of the client,” says Augur, a former cabinet maker who started at the company in 1996 with nine employees.

In recent years Stage One has started an ambitious scheme to train young apprentices, helped by a close link with York College, a local further education institute. “We’ve been taking in seven trainees a year,” says Augur. “We have had a lot of interest from young people in what we have to offer. We appeal to people who like doing practical things.”

Augur further describes the characteristics he is seeking from the people who join the business. “They have to be interested in translating ideas from a drawing or a design into something that is capable of stunning an audience. They may like to do things differently. Nine out of every ten items we create have probably never been made before.”

Craft-based skills in established fields such as woodworking, metalwork and painting are vital. But Stage One has also embraced modern machinery, including computer-aided design and five-axis machine tools. “I am a strong believer in automation because I feel it helps us to do our jobs better,” says Augur.

In 2017  Stage One had sales of £23m, 80 per cent of which came from exports. Among recent projects has been a £1.8m commission to create Android Works, a series of “experiential environments” at a conference for the mobile communications industry in Barcelona. The project – where the client was BrandFuel, a London based design and branding company – involved building eight work and leisure areas decorated and finished differently, with a range of special effects such as lighting systems.

The company has worked on projects at eight Olympic Games. Its designs have included an elaborate cable-based system – to create the illusion of flying objects – that was a centre piece of the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. Stage One was also the manufacturer of a highlight of the 2012 London Olympics: an elaborate cauldron structure comprising 4,000 components, designed by the UK’s Thomas Heatherwick, that gradually unfolded during the final stages of the games’ inauguration event watched by 900m TV viewers. Heatherwick is pictured below with part of the cauldron design.

Stage One uses a range of processes to make its products, from the latest automation systems to manual techniques involving craft skills

Another spectacular creation was a stage set for the Prodigy pop group, an act famed for its energy and aggression. The brief required four large World War Two themed searchlights and three TV towers, all manufactured in lightweight aluminium, that could be packed away and reassembled on tour. The design featured LED-based searchlight units, complete with realistic looking “barbed” wire (made from steel but with plastic barbs) and finished with rust-effect paint treated to make it glow in the dark.

CONSOLIDATION: Why the company that reinvented touch sensors had to reinvent itself as well

Not every technological project goes to plan. Sometimes the initial route to commercialising an idea turns out to be too difficult, requiring a change of approach. The story of Peratech, a company based near Darlington, northern England, offers a perfect illustration. The photo below shows some of the development work at Peratech’s HQ.

Peratech has developed a series of chemicals which – together with techniques that allow them to be turned into products – produce surfaces that are highly sensitive to touch. The materials have been named quantum tunnelling composites (QTCs). While the people behind the Mark II version of Peratech are yet to show that the company can succeed, they have high hopes of eventually making QTC a key “enabling technology” behind a huge number of everyday products. An example of some of the development work on the sensors is shown above.

Unlike conventional touch sensors – normally based on “capacitive” technology – Peratech’s devices can work under water and are sensitive to touches from a gloved hand. They function when overlaid with a surface such as wood, plastic and metal, making them potentially ideal for use in products ranging from industrial equipment to toys.

The materials are based on mixes of powders, liquids and solutions. Some of these can be “printed” like inks in detailed patterns on surfaces. The material mix is sensitive even to small forces, which register as an electric current.

“You could engineer these materials into the steering wheel of a car to allow drivers to operate instruments completely safely, without lifting their fingers,” says Jon Stark, the company’s chief executive. “We can see the game-changing potential of creating skin-like sensing in prosthetic devices and human exoskeletons.”

Peratech’s new sensors could become useful components for engineers in a range of industries  

The US-born Stark adds that thanks to the production processes behind QTC, the sensors can be fabricated into many shapes and sizes, possibly with the help of new generations of 3D printing machines. “We can print what amounts to a ‘smart button’ on any surface of many sorts of materials. There’s virtually no constraint in physical dimensions.”

While the ideas seem impressive, the route to give the company a solid foundation has been rocky. Peratech was started in 1996. The founder was scientific entrepreneur David Lussey, who teamed up with scientists at the University of Durham to create some of the first QTC materials.

Lussey planned to build a business focused on licensing. A partner such as a maker of touch screens in computers would use would be allowed to use Peratech’s ideas in its own production, rewarding the UK company with a mix of upfront fees and payments based on sales. To start with, the plan seemed to work. Companies such as Apple were keen to license the UK company’s technology.

However, this initial effort ended in failure. After financial difficulties Peratech entered administration in 2013, only to re-emerge a year later with a new strategy and new owners and managers including Stark, who came to the UK from the US electronics industry. (Lussey – who left Peratech in 2014 – has not given up on QTC technology. He is making a new, independent effort to make money from the technology through a new company, Quantum Technology Super Sensors.)

The main shareholder in the “new” Peratech is the German chemicals group Merck, which has a successful record in investing in the UK. In the 1970s Merck, through its UK subsidiary BDH, took on the development of a new form of liquid crystal technology originating at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern, Worcestershire. Afterwards, Merck helped to turn liquid crystals into the dominant technology behind most sorts of digital display.

Merck – the German company backing Peratech – has a rich history in creating new materials used in TVs and other displays 

Merck has backed Stark’s new strategy. To get its sensors into commercial use Peratech has abandoned licensing in favour of becoming a straightforward manufacturer. “We decided we wanted to make products,” Stark says. “We create modules [based on sensors] that customers can use and create the software that make the products work.”

While the company’s sales are still thought to be low – Stark does want to reveal the numbers – he says its sensors have formed part of about 1m individual devices including smart phones, electronic whiteboards, handheld drills, computer mice and medical diagnostic systems. The names of its customers remain under wraps.

With most technical development carried out in the UK, manufacturing is left to partners working under contract in South Korea and China. Peratech’s products are then integrated into a variety of consumers and industrial goods made and sold by the final customer. Of the company’s 40 staff, 25 are in the UK, with the rest in development and support roles in the US, Sweden, China and South Korea.

Much of Peratech’s work is based on talking to the businesses behind the final products that the sensors become part of. This is to ensure the most suitable sensor systems are developed for a specific application. In this way, Peratech functions as a mix of manufacturer and a consultancy. Stark explains: “We realised that if we just sold [products], we put the onus on customers to figure out how to turn them into the sensing tools for their devices.” He says Peratech had to find a way to become “accountable for integrating our technology into people’s devices”.

by Peter Marsh

A version of this article appeared in MadeHereNow.com

If you ask Prof Janusz Kozinski to name the people who have most impressed him since he moved to the UK, he has no hesitation: “When I’ve given talks at schools I’ve been immensely encouraged by the young people who want to talk to me afterwards about what I’ve been saying. On each occasion I’ve had perhaps 50-100 people wanting to know more.”

Carrying a new message into schools is at the heart of the project the Polish-Canadian academic is leading to develop new ways of teaching engineering. One of its key objectives is a big increase in the number of women who choose to study the discipline.

Since the summer of 2017 Kozinski (pictured above) has been chief executive of New Model in Technology and Engineering – a new university based in the country town of Hereford. A more memorable name for the establishment – possibly Hereford Engineering University – will be announced soon.

Kozinski’s ambition is to create a new breed of “humanist engineer” – people with technical skills but whose knowledge and mindset also embrace other ideas.  “I want to make a link between the technological aspects to engineering and other disciplines – law, the humanities, arts and social sciences. I want to relate engineering to the meaning of citizenship. People on our courses will spend at least one term outside the UK so they learn about other cultures.”

The professor’s ideas represent a radical contribution to the debate about how to make manufacturing and engineering more meaningful and attractive especially to young people.

The 58-year-old says his ideas appeal both to employers – who say they desperately need people with technical as well as social skills – and to young people and schools. “We’ve had many discussions with schools in Britain, mainly in the public [government-funded] system. Many of them say they like the idea of getting involved with something new and different.”

Much of Kosinski’s philosophy stems from his experience starting up and running the Lassonde School of Engineering in Toronto, part of York University. Over the four years he was there, Kozinski attracted $250m of funding, and doubled the proportion of women in the intake to 34 per cent.  At the start of the 2017/18 year, just after he left, the school admitted 800 students, up from 480 at the start.

He sees many similarities between the young people he’s met in Britain and North America. “[In both regions] they are bright and interested in challenges. They are interested in many things outside the academic world – in the environment, politics and economics.”

But he notices a big difference in the way people think about engineering. “In the UK perceptions are quite negative. Mention of engineering [in newspapers] tends to be accompanied by a photo of two males in hard hats and working in sectors such as construction or the railways. In Canada the image is completely different. Engineering is regarded as a top profession equivalent to that of a medical doctor. Engineering is considered as something related to the work done by companies such as Google, Twitter and Apple. In North America such connections follow [in people’s minds] quite naturally, while in Britain engineering requires more explanation.”

NMITE will try out its teaching methods from September 2018 with a small number of students, followed by a much bigger group when the university launches in earnest two years later. Based in one of the most rural regions of England, Hereford is better known for agricultural shows than cutting-edge technology. Kozinski has however been encouraged by what has been achieved so far, particularly the strength of local support. He reckons he is well on the way to achieving his goal of raising £80m for the new institute over the next few years to give it a decent chance of success.

Almost £25m has been promised from government sources – either central or local –  and just over £1m has been raised through a local club of 100 individual supporters – all of whom have contributed between £5,000 and £100,000. Another £1m has come from a donation of Quanser, a Canadian maker of test equipment.

The Garfield Weston Foundation, a charity, has sanctioned £500,000 which will help finance an eye-catching NMITE initiative – portable “ingenuity labs” crammed with scientific and engineering hardware such as 3D printers that will be placed in schools for a week at a time to help teachers get across the practical elements of engineering to their pupils. Three of these units should be ready to be taken by truck to the first schools from September, and Kozinski says he already has a list of 12 schools keen to host them over the following eight months.

He says several big engineering companies have expressed interest in getting heavily involved with the new institute – and donating sizeable sums.  “I’m speaking to one big company who’s discussing giving

us as much money as the government has already said it will contribute,” says Kozinski.

Given his interest in overseas connections, does he worry about the UK’s decision to leave the European Union?

“From an academic perspective, I don’t see too many risks from Brexit. Our institution will be focused on educating students, not research, so we are not in the market for EU [research and development]. We want to create close ties with other academic establishments outside Britain including in the rest of Europe and I can’t see that the EU decision will prevent us.”

 

Encouraging women a key challenge

An overriding goal of Prof Janusz Kozinski, chief executive of Britain’s new NMITE engineering university, is to attract more women to his institution’s three-year undergraduate courses and combat what many regard as a damaging gender barrier in engineering.

Fewer than one in five students staring engineering courses in Britain is a woman, a much lower proportion than for almost every other subject. This mismatch both limits women’s career options and seriously hinders efforts to address widespread skills shortages.

“The way engineering is taught in the UK is very traditional,” Kozinski says. “I think if we change the way

we teach engineering we can uncork some of the problems [dissuading women from working in technology and related fields].”

At the heart of his approach is the idea of injecting much practical work into NMITE’s courses. The university will also add a dimension that introduces what Kozinski calls “social and community values”. Both these directions will, he says, help to ensure the institution meets its ultimate target of ensuring that half its entrants are female.

The courses will include a focus on problem solving and constant contact with industry. The social element will be achieved, says Kozinski, through periods built into the teaching timetable in which students get the chance to home in on everyday problems.

“For example, I like the idea of engineering students taking time to work with homeless people. They could create a new sort of app for smart phones which provides better ways for people who are homeless and hungry to find sources of food, maybe from businesses that are providing donations.”

NMITE has recruited as its new provost a notable champion of women in engineering in the shape of Prof Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, a Mexican-born academic who was head of enterprise and engineering education at the University of Sheffield where she was also in charge of a project to boost the number of women entering the engineering field.

Timetable for Britain’s new engineering institute

Britain’s newest university – Hereford-based NMITE – is on course to open in the late summer of 2018 with about 25 students, some of whom will be older people with previous experience of education, who will road-test the institution’s ideas.

Following this so-called design cohort will be a “pilot group” of 50-100 mainly young people who – around September 2019 – will start studies in earnest and work towards degrees in engineering that will be awarded jointly by NMITE and the University of Warwick – one of the UK’s most highly regarded academic institutions, with which NMITE has created close ties.

Prof Janusz Kozinski, NMITE chief executive, is planning a “pause” in its programme around 2022, while the university evaluates its teaching ideas before deciding how quickly to increase student numbers. It should house about 5,000 students by 2030. Kozinski plans to accept roughly half of each

year’s intake from the local region, including Wales, a quarter from the rest of the UK and the final quarter from overseas.

He is keen to work with other academic institutions in the UK to promote new ideas, particularly to make engineering more attractive to women. During his time at Lassonde in Canada, for example, he formed links with the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the University of Toronto.

In Britain he has been impressed by the educational ideas put forward by Sir James Dyson, founder of the Dyson appliance and electronics company. Dyson has set up his own educational establishment, Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, which like NMITE will try to bring a new approach to the way technology is taught. “Like me [Sir James] feels a lot of [UK engineering] education is not optimal,” says Kozinski.

By Peter Marsh

The articles first appeared in Made Here Now

The head office of Blaze in an old industrial building in London may look unimpressive – but it’s at the centre of a web of relationships that connect the small bicycle accessories maker with collaborators spread globally. Blaze is among the exponents of the manufacturing network, an idea growing in importance as production companies particularly those in niche fields step up ways to link with others.

A young company with just over 20 employees, Blaze is a pioneer in novel lighting for bicycles. Its best-known product is a new form of “forward looking” laser illumination that warns motorists a bicycle is moving towards them and so cuts accidents.

Emily Brooke, the company’s founder and chief executive, pictured above, is a regular visitor to China to check out key component producers. She adds: “We use Japanese batteries, some of the components [in our electronics] are Japanese or Korean, the laser is German and some of the optical components are Taiwanese.”

But Blaze’s interest in relationships goes well beyond manufacturers’ decades-old pre-occupation with finding good parts suppliers.  Like many companies, Blaze has constructed what amounts to its own ecosystem of collaborators and partners – in Blaze’s case in the burgeoning global bike industry.

The sector has mushroomed in recent years thanks to increased interest particularly among young people in urban cycling, and now encompasses thousands of mainly small businesses in both manufacturing and services. As well as keeping close to some of the big LED light source producers such as Nichia of Japan and Germany’s Osram, Blaze connects via meetings and digital links with a range of

diverse and little-known groups including Swedish mudguard maker Ass Savers, Germany’s bike sharing specialist Next Bike and Australian clothing supplier Vegan Athletic.

Blaze illustrates how connections count. Also it has the right sort of products: many of the world’s expanding manufacturers are in a niche field shielded from heavy competition but with a big global market. At a time when many companies and policymakers are interested in new ideas to boost Europe’s manufacturing prowess, networks and niches should be put high up the list of concepts that need to be encouraged by governments, think tanks and trade groups. Such thinking should go alongside the usual exhortations – now somewhat tired – to increase investments in digital manufacturing under the broad heading of Industrie 4.0.

Driving on the idea that networks and niches are growing in importance are two broad trends – rapid technology development and the opening of the world through globalisation. As technology advances have created more possibilities for variants on products and services, individual sectors can be split into a much greater number of subdivisions than was the case 20 years ago. In this climate companies in narrow parts of a much larger industry can progress.

Examples include the US’s crop sprayer maker Air Tractor, which occupies a “sliver” of the wider aircraft business, and Cochlear, an Australian leader devices inserted inside  the ear to help deaf people, a small segment of the immense medical implant sector. At the same time a company in, say, Spain now has a much wider range of possible partners in many areas from research and development to sales, a result of the emergence of a host of new players from areas including eastern Europe, China and India. Blaze is a good example of a business which combines an interest in both networks and niches – as do many of the other firms inside its own individual ecosystem.

Another company that has used the twin ideas of networks and niches  as a vehicle for both improving its products and adding to sales is Goppion, based near Milan. The 50-person Goppion is a leader in a highly specialist field – making customised museum cases to display valuable and historic works of art. Items protected by the company’s cases include the Crown Jewels in London and the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Goppion’s ecosystem encompasses many of the world’s top international museums in countries from China to Egypt.

Much closer to home, it also has close links with a network of about 35 small businesses, mostly clustered close to Milan, and which provide key parts in areas such as lighting, electronics or structural supports.  Sandro Goppion, Goppion’s president, calls these firms not suppliers but “co-makers”. He says: “It would be virtually impossible for us to have available inside our company the range of capabilities that our co-makers have at their disposal. Our ability to work with these companies on specific jobs for customers gives us a wide sweep of options and helps us to do a better job for than would be possible were we to reply solely on what we can do inhouse.”

The interest in ecosystems is shared not just by small businesses but by many big companies. It would be hard to label some of these “niche players”. The electronics giant Apple and the German engineer Siemens are good examples. It is however possible to regard these companies as instances of businesses that either started out in a niche and became a lot bigger – Apple after all started as a small producer of particularly “user friendly” computer hardware – or a business such as Siemens whose activities are split into many small slivers of the business world.

Apple has a long-term strategy of forming links with key technology companies whose ideas are important in embellishing its products. Apple’s pockets are deep enough to allow it to have bought many of these businesses, to gain unrestricted access to their development ideas. For instance in recent years Apple has taken control of the US sensor maker Fingerworks;  PowerbyProxi , a New Zealand pioneer  in power management; Regaind, a French computer vision company; and  Germany’s Metaio and Vrvana of Canada, both specialists in virtual reality.

In its data sharing and computerised analysis operations, Siemens has a keen interest in connecting with a range of outside firms, whose specialist knowledge in fields such as sensors and software the German engineering leader finds useful. For instance four businesses of varying sizes and based around the world – Germany’s Evosoft, the UK’s Senseye, Bluvision of the US and Atos of France – are all collaborators in a Siemens’ data sharing platform called Mindsphere that helps to facilitate activities such as connecting up machines in factories to assist maintenance or check on technical failures.

The idea of hooking up with other companies frequently extends to connections concerning manufacturing equipment, especially in specialist areas where machines need to be tailored to meet the specific requirements of one manufacturer. For instance, the Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer has close links with several machine suppliers – whose equipment adorns Embraer’s big production site near Sao Paulo – including Japanese robot leader Fanuc, the US automation specialists Encore, Electroimpact and Bastian,  and Norway’s warehouse picking supplier Autostore.

Connections with customers – which clearly belong to the ecosystem of the firm that is supplying them – have always been important. It would be absurd to state that manufacturer/customer interactions are part of a new trend. But in many industries the nature of the dialogue between the maker of goods and the company it sells to has been changed by shifts in technology or consumer tastes. This has increased the  importance of the manufacturer/supplier ecosystem through making the interactions much more fluid.

One example is in making cans for beverages – where the business has been disrupted by the entry of many smaller players (for instance in craft beers) which require a range of highly varied containers to differentiate their products from rivals.

Erik Smuts, a senior executive at Nampak, a big South African can maker, says: “Our customers now make many more niche products than used to be the case. They need to show what they are selling is different. To fit in with their needs we must make a bigger range of cans. As a result, our [canmaking] machines must switch to creating different products twice as often as happened 10 years ago. That creates some challenges for us. If we are to stay competitive, we must be able to cope with the new requirements.”

What are the lessons? Companies need to become more fully aware of the opportunities from networks and niches. More case studies are needed of the specific  firms – big and small- that have benefited from

exploiting these trends, and how they did it. Government organisations should do more to promote the sharing of ideas by getting big and small companies in related fields to talk to each other. One way to do this is to organise “matchmaking” meetings for firms of different sizes but which share similar ideas and are involved with comparable industries.

Finally both policymakers and business groups need to think more strategically about the ingredients needed to create successful manufacturers. They need to shift their analysis from the now somewhat hackneyed rhetoric about the importance of digital technologies – the internet of things, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, smart data transfer and other parts of Industrie 4.0 thinking.

Digitisation will be increasingly important. Companies that are already good will become better by taking on the new thinking. But it’s rare to find a manufacturer where the main reason for its success is its prowess in Industrie 4.0. Behind most companies that excel in a specific field of manufacturing are almost always technologies and ideas with only a tangential link to digitisation. The ability to connect with others and to exploit the advantages of niche operations are often key elements. To build the champion companies of the future, these lessons must be absorbed.

By Peter Marsh

This article appeared originally in Eureka magazine, published by Eureka Network, Brussels, in Spring, 2018

Some of Britain’s biggest engineering companies are backing what they believe is a ground-breaking project to promote technical disciplines to young people, amid signs of growing government encouragement for their efforts.

Photos courtesy of work-wise and Adrian Waine.

Poetry and English literature, not too much maths, a focus on problem solving and constant contact with industry.  All will be on the curriculum of a new university for engineering set to open in 2019 with the aim of awarding half its places to women.  (The article was published in 2017 and has not been updated.)

The New Model in Technology and Engineering – it is due to get a snappier moniker early in 2018 – will be based in the country town of Hereford and is set to become the first purpose-built university in the UK for 40 years. It will require initial investment of £80m, of which just over a quarter has been promised by the government.

“We will be looking for undergraduates with grit, curiosity and passion, and possibly a slightly maverick streak,” says David Sheppard a NMITE director and one of the project’s founders. “They will be interested in finding solutions to problems and hands-on ‘learning by doing’.”

The chief executive of the institution is Prof Janusz Kozinski, a pioneer in technology education who made his name in Canada. He wants to create a new breed of “renaissance engineer” capable of working across disciplines in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, driverless cars and robotics.

NMITE is an industry-led initiative to meet what appears a serious shortage of people with science, engineering and technology qualifications who can fill vacancies in key areas of the economy including manufacturing.  Difficulties in recruiting such people may be holding back UK economic growth – and may get worse in the event of a post -Brexit immigration clampdown.

According to EngineeringUK, the supply of engineering graduates in the UK falls short of demand by about 20,000 a year.

NMITE will be geared to providing students with the skills required for a new era of manufacturing and engineering. It will focus on areas such as digital technology, social interaction and combining skills in disciplines such as biotech and networking software, as well as mechanical and electrical engineering.  It aims to take in as many women as men to increase the relatively low numbers of women in engineering.

Artist’s impression of the new NMiTE collaboration space