It's a reshore thing

I RECENTLY gave a presentation on how automation can help us collectively achieve our sustainability targets. We’ve all heard the arguments for and against any given product or way of life, and it depends on which piece of research that you read as to what is the largest contributor to the environmental changes that we are seeing. I think it is safe to say that we would all agree that we need to implement some changes to save our beloved Mother Earth!

We all know that automation has well defined benefits such as better utilisation of space and energy, improved productivity, increased efficiency, improved utilisation and flexibility, better utilisation of staff, consistent quality, less waste, as well as the Health & Safety benefits as a result of the reduction of manual handling. These same benefits could also be directly linked to sustainability as they help to reduce waste.

Automation strategy

By implementing an automation strategy, we can collectively improve the UK’s overall competitiveness and productivity. Once we improve these, the draw to lower cost manufacturing countries would not be as financially attractive. Once we collectively have the automation strategy in motion, we can collectively use automation as the key enabler for companies to begin reshoring their manufacturing processes back to the UK. By reshoring, we can begin to become less reliant on long supply chains. I hope you would agree that if a company needed a part shipment of an order, they could just pick up the phone and arrange it with a supplier on more or less the same time zone!

There is another HUGE benefit for Reshoring, which has a key environmental positive. This benefit is the reduction of container ships traversing the world’s oceans.  As part of my research, I was astounded to learn that there are over 90,000 cargo ships currently in the global fleet. According to an article that was published in the Guardian a few years ago, one of these cargo ships would emit the equivalent of 50 MILLION cars throughout its serviceable life. In this same article, there is a reference to the level of pollutants that these ships contribute, and that level is truly staggering. 

More UK manufacturing

Do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting for one moment that we should move everything to the UK. We should, however, be looking to reduce the number of ships bringing products from far flung destinations as much as practical and how we can manufacture MORE here in the UK. This will in turn helping our UK manufacturing companies be more competitive on the global stage. As we all know, the UK was once one of the greatest manufacturing countries in the world and we do not need to wait for the UK Government to wake up and create a manufacturing strategy. Each and every one of us can make a difference and buy locally manufactured products wherever possible.

So, in summary, automation is the key to reshoring, which is the key to growing our economy as well as saving our planet. Manufacturing the products that we want in our modern lives, should not cost us the earth. Make local, Buy local!

If you would like to start your automation journey, but don’t know where to start – I would highly recommend visiting the BARA website where we have outlined several topics under the Expert Advice section to give some initial information.  Whilst you are there, why not watch some of our previous roundtables again as there is likely to be just the information you have been searching for and register for our next roundtable discussion.

www.automate-uk.com