Skills, digital and the manufacturing sector
Summary
But Lorraine During, Make UK’s business environment policy adviser, says the UK as a whole is still lagging behind many other industrialised nations in automation and digitisation, where the likes of China, South Korea and Germany are leading the way. According to the Made Smarter Review 2017, which was led by Juergen Maier, chief executive of Siemens UK on behalf of the government, the UK’s ambition is to become a world leader in the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution by 2030. As KPMG’s Harrison explains: “Technology can take out manual processes that are currently delivered by humans, but you still need people to develop, and maintain, a solution that works specifically for your operation – and they are very difficult to find and expensive. According to the Made Smarter Review, they currently spend half as much on ongoing vocational training as the European Union average, at a time when public investment in skills development for workers has been cut drastically. While this lack of investment clearly has to change, one way of at least partially addressing the situation, says Sharples, is to proactively target new talent pools, such as ethnic minorities, older workers and women returners, that have traditionally been under-represented.