The Manufacturer Podcast

‘Sup listener? In this final episode of our miniseries on sustainability, we hear how this topic is viewed in The Philippines, a country where the average monthly wage is just £250 and severe weather concerns are frequent. Our International Reporter James Devonshire loves this country that he calls home but says that sustainability just isn’t a high priority. We also feature Jim McConalogue, CEO of Civitas, who spoke at this year’s SME Growth Summit and joined us at The ManufacturerStudio during Digital Manufacturing Week. Civitas, supported by the ERA Foundation, have released a survey assessing the top challenges SME manufacturers including those posed by energy costs, resilience and cleanliness of supply to future growth. Get your ears around that!

Hi listener.  In this episode, we have Graham Malley of Accenture, our podcast sponsors, and Brian Holliday of Siemens. A line up that would leave even Gareth Southgate spoilt for choice!  We explore the various manufacturing trends when it comes to green practices and evaluate how well the UK is doing as a whole, what more it could do and how sustainability is increasingly making its way to the forefront of the industry's mind.  We hope you enjoy this episode. 

Hi listener,  This podcast comes a full week after our editorial team's trip back from Liverpool, following an epic Digital Manufacturing Week - they still haven't fully recovered.  We have snippets from a wonderful night at The Manufacturer MX Awards, where bottle manufacturers Encirc were crowned the 2022 winners of the Sustainable Manufacturing category. Hear what category judge Alison Beard-Gunter, of Thermo Fisher had to say following the announcement of the winners.  And in an interview from The Manufacturer Studio at Smart Factory Expo, Brian Riley, Digital Technical Lead at Ox Delivers, talks about the work his company are doing to develop clean transport eco-systems in developing countries.  Listen for all that and more. 

Howdy there listener, In today's episode of The Manufacturer Podcast, we kick off with an interview taken from PTC LiveWorx 2023 in Boston. Paul Haimes discusses where the solutions lie for some of the world's big manufacturing problems. We have a chat about upcoming content and current headlines, including a look ahead to an event being run at the end of October by Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) and Innovate UK's Made Smarter Programme. For our big finish, Tom references a human augmenting tech project that simply isn't working in the world of sport - VAR. He rants, with support from Joe, while Lanna yawns. There's all that and more in this latest episode.

You're back, listener. Back in the minds of The Manufacturer's editorial team. What's new? I hear you ask. The Manufacturer MX Awards judging process has come to an end. Hear about some of the learnings and stories from three separate categories; Young Manufacturer, Smart Factory and Product Innovation and Design. Within the round-up of news headlines, we have a look at some of the stories that make up our coverage of National Manufacturing Day - a Make UK initiative which took place yesterday. And we welcome our editor Joe back from his holiday to Sardinia, find out about his needlessly nervous flying experience in this week's 'Made by a Moron.' There's all that and more in today's episode. Sign up to The Manufacturer's next webinar - Energy-Saving – Practical Steps that Reduce Consumption & Cost, with speakers from RS Industria.

Hello listener, this is the first episode of our new Technology Series, sponsored by PTC. In this episode: we discuss our favourite technological advancements - mobile phones, gaming graphics and Starlink internet. We check out some technology related news stories that currently sit on TM.com. Including the development of the Striker II Helmet Mounted Display for the Royal Air Force (RAF) Typhoon fleet. This is being developed at the BAE Systems site in Rochester, Kent, where our editorial team recently paid a visit. And in this week's 'Made by a Moron,' we put paper under the spotlight.

Alright listener? In the final episode of our series on Leadership, we hear some of the leaders of industry that will be appearing as keynote speakers at this year's Manufacturing Leaders' Summit and SME Growth Summit at Digital Manufacturing Week in Liverpool. Get a sneak preview of the discussion at these events, with insights from MLS speakers Natalie Watson, Group Head of Sustainability at Vita Group, Richard Lloyd, General Manager at Accolade Wines The Park and Professor Rab Scott, Director of Industrial Digitalisation at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) Also hear from Katrina Richie at Gripple – Director of People and Culture. She'll be kicking off SME Growth Summit on Wednesday 16th November. In addition to this, our editorial team test their memories of this series and our editor Joe pines after a brand of sweets that were phased out in 1998. There's all that and more in this episode. 

Hola listener.  In this episode of The Manufacturer Podcast, John Mills from the John Mills Institute of Prosperity chats with our editor Joe about last months pound plummet. Find out why a low pound isn't necessarily a bad thing for Britain's manufacturers.  And find out how our Multimedia Editor Tom fared as he swapped the pound for the dollar while out in Miami covering IFS Unleashed. He spoke with Christian Pedersen, Chief Product Officer at IFS, about some the trends he's seeing within the sector.  There's all that and more in today's episode. 

Hello listener - welcome to series 4, episode 4 In this episode, we welcome our podcast sponsor Accenture. With Neil McTiffin, Industry and Transformation Lead Industry X – Accenture Managing Director, and Sarah Dana, Head of Information Software North Europe and META at Rockwell Automation, discuss what leadership looks like within the context of Industry X. You may remember from our previous series, Industry X is the integrated approach to digital transformation, which uses the combined power of data and digital to reimagine the engineering and manufacturing of products. Our editorial team also briefly run through some of the articles in the September edition of The Manufacturer Magazine.  There's all this and more in today's episode. 

Watcha listener!  In episode three of our Leadership Series, we speak to Brompton Bicycle CEO, Will Butler-Adams. He speaks of his time as a leader, the passion that he and the business share for making city living and travel more sustainable and the shake-up needed to promote the "unbelievably cool" careers in manufacturing. Much of this is mentioned in his recent book - The Brompton: Engineering for Change by Will Butler-Adams and Dan Davies (Profile Books) On a trip down to Poole, where the editorial team met three manufacturers, we get the thoughts of Jason Muller - Global Manufacturing Director at Lush. Lush has a completely manual manufacturing process to making its various products - Jason explains why in his interview. There's all that and more in this episode.

In this episode of The Manufacturer Podcast - A panel discussion of leaders, a European site visit and a new category at our TMMX Awards.  The John Mills Institute for Prosperity hosted a panel discussion to propose solutions to some of the issues within UK manufacturing. We travelled up to Sewtec Automation, which is a global automation specialist based up in Wakefield as the panel discussed whether now is the most opportune moment for a manufacturing revival in the UK.  Hear what the team made of their trip to Leuven, Belgium to see additive manufacturers Materialise and learn more about the wide range of 3D printed end applications.  And the TMMX Awards finalists were announced recently. Returning to this year's event is the Manufacturing in Action category which is chosen by the editorial team. Find out which manufacturers have made the cut following various site visits and interviews over the past year. 

Our Leadership Series kicks off with two excellent interviews. Firstly, we have an exclusive with John Pearce, CEO of Made in Britain, who celebrated their 10th birthday this year. John has been at the helm for the last 7 years, and discusses what has changed in this time as well as what he believes the next 10 years could hold.  We also have an interview with Juergen Maier that we did at MACH 2022 back in April. Juergen speaks about the changes we've seen in the last couple of years and his admiration of UK manufacturers progress in digitalisation and the net zero push.  The editorial team also discuss some of the fantastic leaders they've encountered, be it through meeting them at factories and facilities or through awards programmes such as The Manufacturer Top100.  We've got all this and more, so get stuck in listener! 

Happy Friday listener - here's another podcast for your ears. Last week, we announced the finalists for The Manufacturer MX Awards 2023. Hear the full rundown of award categories and shortlisted companies for this year. You can hear what's new on The Manufacturer, with a rundown of some of the latest news headlines in the sector. We also launch a new section of the podcast, fresh with it's own low budget jingle, 'Made by a Moron.' We pick out some products, be it the ones we use every day, be it an odd quirk in an otherwise solid product, or maybe it's a product that has been in the news recently. We question, 'How did that make it out of the factory?' Do these products need improvement? Or do we just not know how to use them? Maybe we're the morons... There's all that and more in today's episode.

The podcast returns with the first episode of a mini-series on the topic of leadership. Tom St John, Joe Bush, Lanna Deamer and James Devonshire discuss future events, namely The Manufacturer Live, taking place in Liverpool in November (14-15). We also hear about recent factory visits to BAE Systems in Rochester, Nims Crisps, Phinia and RS Group in Corby. We've got that, and some really stupid stuff - like Joe's "crappuccino" story and the time a friend of his took a dump in the wrong hotel room. ****HORRIFYINGLY LOW-BROW!**** If you're looking for something more cultured then, I don't know, stick on Radio 4 or something....

Hi listener - we finally have the final episode of series 3 for you. Through record breaking temperatures we hid in our homes, turned the fans on full blast and sat in ice baths to bring you episode 6 of our Technology Series.  This episode features a fascinating factory visit to BotsAndUs; manufacturers of autonomous robots that are used to capture data in real time across warehouses and factories. We preview the July/August edition of The Manufacturer Magazine which is about to hit desks and doorways. We also feature two interviews from our recent Manufacturing Digitalisation Summit up in Manchester which took place last week.  There's all that and more to enjoy in this episode - take a listen! 

Hey there listener! The Manufacturer Podcast returns with episode five of our series on Technology.  We welcome our podcast sponsors Accenture on to talk about the latest manufacturing technology, and how it’s being applied in the manufacturing world. Dan Farrell at Accenture, along with Severine Trouillet from Dassault Systèmes discuss how this new and exciting tech can enable sustainable growth within the industry.  We also look back at a gem of a keynote speech from Amber Case, an American cyborg anthropologist, who spoke at Digital Manufacturing Week in 2020. Listen back to a snippet of her presentation on "Calm Technology," which refers to technology that isn’t time consuming, annoying or unreliable.  We hope you enjoy this episode. 

Hey there listener. In episode 4 of our Technology Series we feature interviews from two first class UK manufacturers, who have excelled in the digital space. Origin and Gripple, TMMX Award Winners from last year, tells us how they've achieved sensible and value added technology adoption and why it's been so important to the way they drive their manufacturing operations. Also, The Manufacturer Magazine is almost out - hear our team discuss what to look out for in the May/June edition, which is packed with some wonderful features and interviews.  We also welcome Toby Gill, the CEO of Intelligent Power Generation (IPG), a British start-up working to de-risk the transition to more sustainable fuels and enable industries to end their reliance on diesel generators. IPG has manufactured its own unique flameless generator - Toby discusses how the manufacturing industry can do more to support the production of vital climate-tech innovations. That's all to look forward to in this episode.  

Hi there, listener. This week's episode looks at the opportunities and misconceptions of cloud based manufacturing programmes. In the case of Britishvolt, the company responsible for the UK's first Gigafactory, the Infor CloudSuite Automotive programme was selected earlier in the year to run operations at the plant. Andrew Kinder at Infor explains why such a programme is suited to managing the £3.8 billion facility in the northeast and David Therefall speaks about the reasons for the selection, as well as the future landscape of UK EV provision and infrastructure.     We also welcome Fractory on to the podcast. CEO Martin Vares, TMMX Awards finalist from last year's Young Manufacturer of the Year category explains some of the common misconceptions when it comes to cloud solutions.  Join our returning editorial team, for this third episode in our Technology Series. 

Good day to you listener, we have the second episode of our Technology Series recorded and ready for you to listen to. Sit back and ponder, as we bring you a handful of interviews recorded at this years Industrial Data Summit, which took place on Thursday 28th April at Villa Park in Birmingham.  We hear from four keynote speakers from the event - Harry Minns, Systems and Data Controller at Williams Racing discusses how data management and analytics can drive performance, giving examples from Formula 1.  Jon Stammers, Theme Lead for Connectivity and AI within the AMRC's Integrated Manufacturing Group, talks about data-centric manufacturing and some of the benefits but also the challenges that manufacturers can have moving to that approach.  Mircea Oprisan is Director of Advanced Analytics at Mars, he touches on an overreliance on technology when it comes to managing data. It’s critical, in his opinion to understand what the performance challenge is first before thinking about the data and technologies to implement.  And lastly, Marla Nelson Head of Data Driven Transformation and Culture at Jaguar Land Rover, spoke on the topic of organisational structure and buy-in for data strategy.  In between these interviews, Conference Production Manager Ashley Oulton joins Tom and Joe from the editorial team in the studio. 

Welcome back listener, in today's episode of The Manufacturer Podcast we reflect on meticulous engineering, cutting edge technology and terrifying simulator experiences all picked up from our recent factory visit to Leonardo Helicopters down in Yeovil.  We also invite Kurt Dressel from Liferay to speak to us about how manufacturers can best harness the powers of technology and the trends that have emerged more recently within digital transformation projects.   We hope you enjoy this episode, which marks the start of our series on technology.