Andrew highlights the current situation where only 50% of apprenticeship positions have been filled in the last year, citing the reason as a lack of technology skills on the curriculum. Calling on businesses to become more engaged with the education system or risk the UK being left behind, he points out that the onus is on both government and industry to establish the key skills needed for the workforce of the future.
This is a significant national issue, says Hamid, and the government, political parties and industry will need to come together to create a long term strategic roadmap. Calling on the National Strategy review to provide a framework to solve the issue across the UK, Nigel says this is a job for both government and industry.
We should trust industry to play a leading role in setting the digitisation, says Hamid, and to involve the broader national stakeholders in creating innovative ways to address this opportunity. “We play in an intensely competitive global environment and we are acutely aware of the unparalleled focus and investment other countries are putting into making their digitisation capability a major source of economic growth. Let’s start believing that we can be one of the global leaders in this space and let’s start planning and journey with greater belief, urgency and commitment.”
Looking to the future
One of the key challenges, as Andrew sees it, is the current lack of forward thinking, explaining that companies are used to talking in the short-term rather than planning in long-term cycles. In terms of skills and training, there is a certain reticence to be involved in personal development training for staff, which also needs to change.
Finally, we need to think about how our more traditional Manufacturing processes will evolve going forward. “The development of automation would provide a good illustration. Early automation systems essentially represented mechanical systems that in simple terms are able to ‘act’ upon instructions. The addition of sensors and controls enabled this mechanisation to not only ‘act’ upon instructions but to also ‘act and sense’ - examples include, adaptive robotic grinding. By linking digitisation and IoT, the evolving Cyber physical systems are making the greatest shift of all into groups of machines which can now ‘act, sense, & communicate’, and ultimately as AI develops, ‘decide & think’. Hence, the industrial robots will increasingly become fully integrated with the fundamental manufacturing environment and be smart and dexterous enough to carry out highly complex and detailed activities; all at very high productivity levels.”