A fond farewell

THIS IS the article that I have been dreading… Before I get into why, I need to ask where have the last three years as BARA Chair gone? As with most business endeavours I had such big plans, some of which have been realised, some are still in progress and some just weren’t possible to achieve.

In my opinion, one of our greatest achievements during my tenure as BARA Chair was the creation of the Automation UK exhibition, which had its inaugural event in 2023. Having attended both years of the event, I personally think that it feels like no other event that I have attended. Could there have been a higher footfall? Maybe… That being said, the people that attended were all looking for solutions for specific manufacturing challenges. The show attendance has grown in the second year when compared to the first year, and the show doubled its footprint at the same time. For 2025, the Machine Vision Conference will also fall under the banner of Automation UK, which we think will benefit both Automation UK and MVC as vision and automation work hand in glove.

We have also continued to develop the format for our BARA Roundtable events, which have predominately been held as online webinars. We did hold a Live Roundtable at Automation UK back in June, which was such a resounding success, we are repeating it on 25 September at the PPMA show. The panel all agreed that it was such a broad and important topic, that we all could have spoken for hours on the subject.

Handing over the reins

So, if you haven’t guessed it by now, my time as BARA Chair is at its end. On 1 October, I will hand over the reins to Oliver Selby, who is also the Head of Sales for Fanuc UK. I have known Oliver for quite a while and can safely say that he will do an outstanding job and will drive the Association forward with his unwavering drive and passion for Robotics and Automation. I know that he will want to introduce himself properly in his first article, so I will leave that bit to him. I will say that, like me, he thinks that the key to making our economy stronger is reliant on making our manufacturing sectors more efficient and cost effective on the global stage. The key to this is to automate more of the Dull, Dirty and Dangerous applications, which in turn will assist in enabling UK Companies to reshore their manufacturing and in turn creating more jobs.

We all know that there is a skills shortage here in the UK, and I know that Oliver is passionate about how we could potentially achieve this. Again, I do not want to pre-empt anything he may or may not promote, so I’ll fade quietly into the background – to some extent anyway. Don’t worry, I’m still going to be on the Council and hope to be able to take part in Roundtable discussions in the future. If you’re around PPMA 2024 or Automation UK 2025, I’m sure I’ll be found somewhere around the events.

I guess the only thing left is for me to thank you for reading my mad ramblings over the last three years. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my opinions and hopefully get you to think more about how automation can help your business grow, become more efficient and most importantly become more sustainable for the good of us all.

www.automate-uk.com/our-associations/bara