DTI manufacturing advisory service to ramp up this year

Advice on IT, business and manufacturing processes best practice, will soon be available nationally and regionally via the DTI’s upcoming web-based Manufacturing Advisory Service, launched earlier this month. It’s not about grants, despite the Government’s pledged keen interest in industry, but instead assisted guidance and access to a network of knowledge. But the DTI is funding the service to the tune of £15 million for the first three years, with additional contributions from the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and the Welsh Development Agency (WDA). The MAS website, www.dti.gov.uk/manufacturing, launched by Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, on April 12, is the first step – effectively at the moment a virtual mission statement. It will evolve during the year to provide the pointing services and hyperlinks to information and those that can help. The real facilities, providing SMEs initially with reference data, free help and then paid-for consultancy and practical assistance, will follow later this year – although it has already started. Regional Centres of Manufacturing Excellence (RCMEs) are being set up now by the DTI and the RDAs and WDA, and these will be underpinned by Centres of Expertise in Manufacturing (CMEs), being set up concurrently by design and engineering services consultancy Inbis under contract to the DTI. MAS will also interface to the DTI’s existing SBS (Small Business Service) and its network of Business Links, providing routes to associated business advice. Eight RCMEs have already been announced, and the remaining two (Wales and East of England) are due for release soon. Three have already started operations – those being in the South East, East Midlands and North West. Two more RCMEs will be launched in May (Yorkshire on the 24th b y Alan Johnson, Minister of State for the Regions and Employment Relations, and the North East on 29th by Lord Sainsbury, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Science and Innovation). The rest, says the DTI, are due to go live by this autumn. These will offer free telephone advice and point the way to expert advice and additional paid-for services provided via the national network of CMEs. Ron Egginton, deputy director for manufacturing strategy at the DTI, says there are already 100 CMEs – the existing TANet network and relevant associations – and the goal is around 500. The department is seeking trade associations, training organisations, university faculty centres of excellence and the like able to qualify and offer agreed service levels to industry. These will be featured on the MAS website. One is the UK branch of North America’s Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME-UK), a group of senior industrialists with knowledge that spreads from modern lean manufacturing technology and methods to general manufacturing business best practice. Dr Colin Mynott, secretary of AME-UK, says: “Lean Manufacturing is one of the key reasons why USA productivity is better than that in the UK, and one that my Association is striving to help UK manufacturers to overcome.” Bob Davis, managing director of Lincolnshire-based telecoms manufacturer Deltron-Emcon and also on the AME-UK board, says: “ If they’re after information on lean manufacturing, we can provide everything from facilitators to videos and literature.” Government seems to be setting considerable store by this new drive to enable manufacturers to improve their productivity, which it sees as lagging that of global competitors. And with the example of web-centred efforts in the US to guide it, it should be a help, not least in terms of finding credible, unbiased initial and longer term advice and assistance.