British Manufacturing

[mw3230]

I'm not being clear about MAKING a bicycle.

In the old days, steel was pushed in one end of the factory, and a bicycle came out the other end.

Brompton do indeed make bikes.
Who makes the tyres?
Who makes the chain?
Who makes the cranks?
etc
etc
etc

In the old days, Raleigh (for instance) made the lot!

We may be a Manufacturing Nation, but we're more like an Assembling Nation.

Apart from nostalgia, what is so good about pushing steel in at one end and bringing a bike out the other. The skill in manufacturing is surely balancing costs, supplies, markets, consumer demand, profitability and all the thousand other things that go to making a successful company. The purpose of being in business is profit not heitage (although the British Cadbury workers would probably have a different view)

[cycleruk]

At least we still manufacture chocolate.....damn it, Johnny Foreigner's after that one as well now.

And Fishermans Friends.

[mrbarry]

Who says it's an urban myth fueled by the media? Tell that to the people like me who have watched company after company close and move abroard. Tell it to the skilled workers who now push broom for a living. Itsno myth it's hiden if anything. The midlands was a thriving manufactoring area once, now 80% of the factories are gone and the rest are owned by other nations. My company had a return on on capital of -5.8% last year, guess how many new investors it achived. Only those few who saw this years growth in stock price but they where few!

[hubgearfreak]

80% of the factories are gone

you're right. if i walk around the industrial heartland of this city, the buildings that once displayed the proud names that appeared on the smoke boxes of heavy machines all over the empire, are now gyms, media studies universities and laminate flooring warehouses

[Deckie]

It is very easy to blame successive governments since the 1940's for the apparent demise of British Manufacturing, however it should, from Board Room to Shop Floor, take a lot of the blame on its own shoulders.

Roots rejected the VW Beetle in 1945 as a "car no one would buy", hmm
Marshal tractor's engineers developed a 100hp tractor in the 1950's, the accountants & board said no farmer would ever need that much power (150hp is now usually seen as a bare minimum, up to 600+hp) The Marshal Works are now a shopping centre.
The British Ship Building industry could compete on cost and quality with any other in the world in the 70's, but couldn't guarantee when the ship would be built as the workers would probably be on strike.
BMC/Leyland/Austin/Rover designed some very good cars, but quality control was so poor and build time so disrupted they couldn't sell them internationally. (My grandfather once tried to order Leyland trucks for a project in Ghana in the 60's. They could supply the trucks but no spares. Mercedes matched the price and threw in spares, guess where the order went)

There are a huge number of small dynamic manufacturuers in the UK competing very successfully in the world market, but because they are small and may employ fewer than 100 people they are not noticed. Put all their efforts together and the result per head of employees is far greater than that of the larger companies with their management overheads.

[mw3230]

Who says it's an urban myth fueled by the media? Tell that to the people like me who have watched company after company close and move abroard. Tell it to the skilled workers who now push broom for a living. Itsno myth it's hiden if anything. The midlands was a thriving manufactoring area once, now 80% of the factories are gone and the rest are owned by other nations. My company had a return on on capital of -5.8% last year, guess how many new investors it achived. Only those few who saw this years growth in stock price but they where few!

Whether we like it or not. those skilled workers either have skills that no-one currently needs, skills that are too expensive or skills that are redundant. I know that you are not suggesting that companies maliciously close down in order to force their employees onto the street?

Much of the industry in the Midlands was unable to compete in terms of prduct or price (nowhere betters illustrates this than the North East shipbuilding industry -no longer existing) and they were no longer able to carry on in business despite, in some case, massive Government handouts

I'm not being uncaring in saying this, we must face the realities of the world as it is

[irc]

Of course sometimes it seems the UK plays be the rules and other countries manage to bend them. The steelworks that closed recently in the north eastT had a contract to produce steel at a set price. The buyer was happy when this was below world market price but broke the contract when the world price wsent below the contract price.

Meanwhile Tata, the owner of Corus will by closing Teeside profit from cutting CO2 in Europe whilst at the same time increasing steel (and CO2) production in India.

"Thus, at the end of the day, Redcar will lose its biggest employer and one of the largest manufacturing plants left in Britain. Tata, having gained up to £1.2 billion from "carbon credits", will get its new steel plants – while the net amount of CO2 emitted worldwide will not have been reduced a jot. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009 ... job-losses

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu ... edcar.html

[philg]

Who says it's an urban myth fueled by the media?

People who look at the facts perhaps?

UN figures on UK manufacturing output (Billions $US)
1990 1995 2000 2005 2006 2007
207 219 228 269 303 342

Just because you don't see it around you doesn't mean it isn't happening. Sure the big heavy industries are largely gone, but replacing them are small outfits (like ours - 30 people £10M turnover, mostly for export and supplied by even smaller machine shops locally)

Advances in maufacturing technology (robots, computers..) means more is made by fewer (wherever you are in the world) so yes, front-line manufacturing jobs have been lost and those that remain need different skills. This is nothing new!

UK is currently 6th or 7th in the world as I said before, it is expected that S Korea & India will overtake us by 2025 - this is hardly doomsday scenario, well not to me anyway - YMMV

[glueman]

Niche manufacturers seem to do very well in the UK, it's the three hundred blokes at t'mill end of production that's gone kapput. Having worked briefly in the latter sphere it couldn't disappear fast enough for me. Repetitive, soul-destroying, low paid work overseen my incompetent management and clueless greedy owners.

[stoobs]

Rolls-Royce Aero Engines? A world force in advanced technologies which sometimes come through to bikes, too, such as carbon fibre and light alloys.

[GrahamNR17]

Rolls-Royce Aero Engines? A world force in advanced technologies which sometimes come through to bikes, too, such as carbon fibre and light alloys.

Most of that technology was invented/developed by the Government. Oh, yes it was, now don't argue with Graham

We have the atomic weapons program to thank for light alloys and many carbon technologies. You need to thank Aldermaston for the fact jet fighters etc are able to stop (carbon disc brakes etc) and bizarrely, you need to thank them for your artificial hip joint - yes you do, I already told you not to argue with me They also did MUCH work on light alloys etc. In fact, since the 'end' of the arms race, innovation is relatively zero compared with the massive amounts of technology that came out of those kinds of places.

So, that's the answer, we need another cold war. That will lead to more UK employment, more innovation, and better employment levels in manufacturing.

Sorted

Someone go and poke a Russian with a pointy stick to get the ball rolling...

[mw3230]

Is the current war in Afghanistan generating as much devlopment and innovation?

[GrahamNR17]

Is the current war in Afghanistan generating as much devlopment and innovation?

I'd say probably not. I dunno, we just don't do anything like we used to Which kind of brings us squarely back to Mick's original point

Although one British manufacturer has sold thousands of bomb detectors to Afghanistan, Irag etc at $40,000 a go. Trouble is, it turns out they're fakes Maybe fraud has replaced manufacturing

[Mick F]

I started this thread after a conversation. What I omitted to say on the OP was that we were actually talking about WW2 and how we could carry on independently producing goods and machinery. We had coal, steel ship-building, cars, lorries, ......... let alone the arms industry. Yes, I know we needed help from USA, but basically, "Britain stood alone."

The point was, in those days, we didn't need the rest of the world to provide us with components, we MADE things. Now all we do, is ASSEMBLE things, so we need the rest of the world to provide us with the bits. If Japan/China/Taiwan stopped producing, what would happen?

If, God forbid, we had WW3, we can't even make a bicycle by ourselves.

[glueman]

There was huge innovation up to WW2 in Britain but after that it became specialised, hi-tech if you will and not for domestic development. As individuals we don't need fewer products of heavy industry than we once did, so the potential is always there to make them again. The fact is war knackered the country as much as war had fed it previously. By 1945 everything was worn out or broken and people weren't prepared to bash metal for ten quid a week when they'd been fighting the Japanese in a Burmese swamp or turning Hanover into rubble from an aeroplane.

Old school inventors and engineers still exist in the Thames Valley supplying the gubbins for Formula 1 and generate the concepts for all manner of overseas manufactured bits. The difference now is it'll be 12 chaps on laptops on an industrial estate off a motorway junction, not a six storey mill with chimneys. There'll still be chimneys in China.