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News Release from: The Manufacturer
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 24 February 2004
People are the key to a manufacturing
uplift
If British companies want to be world leaders, people are the key, said Brian Fleet of Airbus UK at a packed Manufacturing Alliance debate at the company's GBP 350 million Broughton factory.
If British companies want to be world leaders, people are the key That was the message that Brian Fleet, Airbus UK's vice president of manufacturing, gave a packed Manufacturing Alliance debate at the company's GBP 350 million Broughton factory
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 1 Nov 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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"It's people that make Airbus fly," he said, "Skilled and motivated people.
We don't sell the speed of the arm but their intellectual capability.
We have invested ?1.8 billion in a capability that the world wants to buy, and it is the smartness of the process that we are selling." The event, organised on behalf of the Manufacturing Alliance by Conquest Business Media, attracted around 130 representatives from Britain's leading manufacturers who joined in the debate with a panel that, as well as Brian Fleet, also included Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Amicus and Professor Keith Hayward of the Society of British Aerospace Companies.
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According to Derek Simpson, it is Airbus's exemplary approaches to employee involvement and consultation and investment in research and development that is turning it into the world's leading aerospace company.
He said: "It's vital for the future of UK manufacturing that Airbus's methods become the rule, not the exception.
The lessons of businesses such as Airbus need to be applied across the board if manufacturing businesses are to replicate its unrivalled success." Following the downturn experienced in aviation following September 11th 2001, Airbus worked with unions to save 1200 jobs at Broughton by introducing a 35-hour week, whereas Boeing made up to 30,000 compulsory redundancies.
On some aircraft, Airbus is now up to 50% more productive than Boeing and has overtaken its US rival on sales.
Brian Fleet's said that being the best is the only way to guarantee jobs, with good people and good working relationships with the unions and the rest of the industry.
"We formed partnerships with trade unions so that one incident would not affect an industry that took 33 years to generate," he said.
A general concern of the meeting was that manufacturing is not getting the support it needs from the government to create a level playing field.
"We are transmitting, but the receiver isn't receiving," said Brian Fleet.
"Governments around the world are very keen to get into aerospace.
It's high tech, high value added, and it's at the top end of the food chain.
If we come out to play a game of cricket in our whites and everyone else is playing a different game to a different set of rules the UK will lose out." Professor Hayward shared some of these concerns but pointed out that the UK's aerospace industry is already far more global than its competitors.
"There is still an extraordinary future in producing high-value components, subsystems and discrete equipment here.
If you can invest in the technology you can pin global capital to the UK.
I don't feel apprehensive about the onset of low-cost competition - there's a large chunk of the aerospace industry where the barriers to entry are enormous and those barriers are embedded in the UK supply chain.
"Our strength is that we have been exposed to competition, painful as it has been, over the past ten to fifteen years and are lean and mean compared to our European competitors.
But the qualification is that we've still got to invest as nation in the core key technologies." Glen White, CEO of Conquest Business Media picked up this as a constant theme of the Manufacturing Alliances events.
"One thing that has become clear from our meetings is that there is a lack of support from government, but I don't think that Blair and Brown are suddenly going to change their minds and start supporting manufacturing.
If we recognise that skills, design, innovation, and investment are where productivity gains and better products are going to come from, then I think manufacturing should stop worrying about government and worry more about getting on with its business," he said.
The Manufacturing Alliance is sponsored by HP, KPMG, Microsoft, SAP and Advantage West Midlands.
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