I am not so sure that closing down the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) was a bad thing. For me, the organisation had lost its way. I have been working as a MAS consultant for about eight years and saw the organisation slip from being a necessary enthusiastic path finder for kaizen, lean manufacturing and systems thinking, to becoming another expensive bureaucratic quango governed by targets and big corporate thinking. Towards the end I was heartbroken to see MAS lose its soul.
The statistics quoted in the article are exaggerated to say the least. They remind me of Soviet-style agricultural production figures. Every year, the agricultural output statistics rose while the Russian people were fed cheap grain dumped on the international market from the USA’s massive surplus.
The problem centres on the fact that everyone in the chain of information gathering had a vested interest in talking up the benefits of MAS. Starting with the client (who might want a further dollop of government money and liked the PR, so wanted to keep the local area manager happy), through to the consultant (who wants to prove himself and get referrals from MAS) to the local area manager who has to meet targets.
These motivations spread right up the chain. Everyone had to meet targets or give an impression that what they did was worthwhile. They all relied on the entity one rung below to give them the necessary stats to show everything was okay. So, to say that MAS generated or saved x number of jobs is pure fallacy.
Personally, despite achieving 'amazing GVA returns' I found that often what I did turned out to be a waste of time and taxpayer’s money. This was because the client’s commitment was minimised by the subsidy. It seems a good principle that if consultancy or coaching work is going to add value, the client should pay for it.
They are the businesses who are getting a direct return on investment. Just because MAS subsidies and government intervention has stopped, that doesn’t mean the good consultants have gone. They are still out there earning an honest living by offering value-added services.
