British Manufacturing!

[EINSIGN]

I am an avid supporter of pulling our country out the mess it is in by increasing manufacturing output and quality of goods. Is anyone else here involved in manufacturing, or does anyone feel this not the answer. If not where does new money and new jobs come from?

Snippet taken from: http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/article/38875/Manu...

Robot density per 10,000 employees:

Germany has 144 robots per 10,000 employees
Italy 114
Spain 57
France 56

UK just 27

China is investing heavily, buying nearly 15,000 robots last year compared to just 880 in the UK. And Foxconn's Chinese operations say they are going to install some 1 million robots within the next three years!

[stitched]

It's all very well installing robots but care needs to be taken that the ongoing maintenance of them does not exceed the cost of the previous people who did their job.
Before installing a mechanical fix companies would do well to look at the cost of maintaining and repairing such things, having just put right a poorly installed robot I think the cost to the company would equate to employing two people for around a year, hopefully this will be an end to the matter however before handing it to me the company called the installation 'engineers' out many times at significant cost to attempt a resolution to the problems that were occuring, these problems were costing roughly £400K per year in downtime.
Keeping the two blokes on to stack the pallets would have saved the company around a million quid over the last 3 years and more importantly employees pay a tad more tax than robots.

[thinfourth2]

Robots are great at making rubber dogs st

Not so good at making jet engines

[Ozzie Osmond]

Uk gave up manufacturing ordinary goods decades ago, fundamentally because the costs of running a factory in UK were uncompetitive with China and India. Unless something has changed - nothing has changed.

The other problem is that the Germans are very good at what they do in their more sophisticated manufacturing. UK has to meet and beat them even to get to the starting line.

[Liokault]

EINSIGN said:

I am an avid supporter of pulling our country out the mess it is in by increasing manufacturing output and quality of goods. Is anyone else here involved in manufacturing, or does anyone feel this not the answer. If not where does new money and new jobs come from?

Snippet taken from: http://www.eurekamagazine.co.uk/article/38875/Manu...

Robot density per 10,000 employees:

Germany has 144 robots per 10,000 employees
Italy 114
Spain 57
France 56

UK just 27

China is investing heavily, buying nearly 15,000 robots last year compared to just 880 in the UK. And Foxconn's Chinese operations say they are going to install some 1 million robots within the next three years!

The money isn't in the making of things, its in the IP and the design. For every $500 Iphone made in China, $6.5 stays in China as manufacturing cost. Do we really want to aim at that $6.5? Its certainly not going to make us rich. $300 odd is profit for Apple.

We are not going to get rich by creating millions of low paid jobs; we are going to get rich by being an ideas and design hub. Personally, I would love to see the government pour billions into stem cell research and basically making it a British dominated industry.



http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/12/made-in-...

Edited by Liokault on Saturday 14th January 14:26

[freecar]

thinfourth2 said:

Robots are great at making rubber dogs st

Not so good at making jet engines

Funny, I don't remember many people having their hands on during the manufacture of precision turbine parts, generally the precision work is done by robot!

I'd love to see somebody spark eroding compressor blades by hand! Or grinding the christmas tree!

Of course if you mean the assembly of them then yes there are a few folks involved but they'd have nothing to do were it not for the robots who made nigh on all the parts!

[Liokault]

Ozzie Osmond said:

The other problem is that the Germans are very good at what they do in their more sophisticated manufacturing. UK has to meet and beat them even to get to the starting line.

Meh, I work in a German factory. I have worked in British factory’s and I have worked in British factory’s run by Germans. I'm not seeing much difference really.

The real difference is that the German government continued to support its manufacturing sector where the British government let it slip as troublesome thinking that banking would always be there to pick up the bill.

Edited by Liokault on Saturday 14th January 14:34

[EINSIGN]

Liokault said:

The money isn't in the making of things, its in the IP and the design. For every $500 Iphone made in China, $6.5 stays in China as manufacturing cost. Do we really want to aim at that $6.5? Its certainly not going to make us rich. $300 odd is profit for Apple.

We are not going to get rich by creating millions of low paid jobs; we are going to get rich by being an ideas and design hub. Personally, I would love to see the government pour billions into stem cell research and basically making it a British dominated industry.

So whilst a handful of intelligent creative people come up with new ideas the rest of the population does what?

Ref Apple this is a short term view that is correct for high volume consumable items. What about the millions of SME sized businesses.

When China gets its act together in a couple more years do you really think they will allow the profit to go elsewhere?

Why has Germany kept its AAA credit rating and has the funds to bail out the rest of Europe?

[fido]

thinfourth2 said:

Robots are great at making rubber dogs sts

Yes, and those crappy iPhones that cost £600 a piece. {sarcasm}
Also Robot is a pretty generic term - they can peform anything from a simple item of assembly line operation that would drive a human to suicide, or something controlled by CAM that is way beyond what a human could perform accurately, over millions of cycles. It's progress which ever way you look at it.

Edited by fido on Saturday 14th January 14:55

[Apache]

thinfourth2 said:

Robots are great at making rubber dogs st

Not so good at making jet engines

You don't know much about robots do you. Robots are used in very complex processes such as mini bioreactors, stem cell research, tissue culture, cell line selection and development, wafer fabrication, crystal growing etc etc

[Use Psychology]

Liokault said:

The money isn't in the making of things, its in the IP and the design. For every $500 Iphone made in China, $6.5 stays in China as manufacturing cost. Do we really want to aim at that $6.5? Its certainly not going to make us rich. $300 odd is profit for Apple.

We are not going to get rich by creating millions of low paid jobs; we are going to get rich by being an ideas and design hub. Personally, I would love to see the government pour billions into stem cell research and basically making it a British dominated industry.



http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/12/made-in-...

Edited by Liokault on Saturday 14th January 14:26

I think you are quite right here, some government direction of our future industry through financial stimulus for fundamental research (in our universities and perhaps establish some new research institutes like we have here in Germany, e.g. Leibniz and Max Planck institutes) is necessary. Add tax breaks and other incentives for industry, who will take the basic research into technologies that can be monetarised. We should target areas such as biotechnology, clean energy generation (global warming is irrelevant, fossil fuels are still finite so getting a head start here is a good idea), nanotechnology - e.g. graphene was discovered in the UK, let's exploit it.

Sadly the government is saying they are supporting a strong research sector in the UK whlst actually fking it up big style, angry letters this week to various newspapers from a whole host of scientists saying the UK science funding body (EPSRC) are not fit for purpose, largely I agree.

I think 'organising' an economy on this scale can only be done by a government and while I'm against government intervention in principle I think intervening to position the country in an economically strong way for the future can only be good.

[Use Psychology]

EINSIGN said:

So whilst a handful of intelligent creative people come up with new ideas the rest of the population does what?

as work in general becomes less laboue intensive this is a big problem for societies. I don't think the current solution works.

[thinfourth2]

freecar said:

Funny, I don't remember many people having their hands on during the manufacture of precision turbine parts, generally the precision work is done by robot!

I'd love to see somebody spark eroding compressor blades by hand!

Of course if you mean the assembly of them then yes there are a few folks involved but they'd have nothing to do were it not for the robots who made nigh on all the parts!

What do you define as a robot?

Is a cnc machine a robot?

Is a washing machine a robot?

freecar said:

Or grinding the christmas tree!

of course not the tinsel gets stuck in the disc

[thinfourth2]

fido said:

Yes, and those crappy iPhones that cost £600 a piece. {sarcasm}

Of which about £5 goes to china in profit

[EINSIGN]

thinfourth2 said:

Of which about £5 goes to china in profit

Which country has the financial problems?

[king arthur]

EINSIGN said:

So whilst a handful of intelligent creative people come up with new ideas the rest of the population does what?

This is the problem isn't it. It's great having companies like ARM here, I wish we had more like them. But they'll never solve our unemployment problems.

[thinfourth2]

EINSIGN said:

Which country has the financial problems?

Well it ain't Apple

[freecar]

thinfourth2 said:

freecar said:

Funny, I don't remember many people having their hands on during the manufacture of precision turbine parts, generally the precision work is done by robot!

I'd love to see somebody spark eroding compressor blades by hand!

Of course if you mean the assembly of them then yes there are a few folks involved but they'd have nothing to do were it not for the robots who made nigh on all the parts!

What do you define as a robot?

Is a cnc machine a robot?

Is a washing machine a robot?

freecar said:

Or grinding the christmas tree!

of course not the tinsel gets stuck in the disc

Yes a cnc machine is a robot.

A washing machine is also a robot.

This really isn't hard, if a person is required for the machine to complete its entire operation then it is just a machine, if it can do the majority of its job without people then it is a robot.

Or do you consider that the only robots in manufacture are the ones with a big swinging arm that builds cars? A human is still required to unload the production line so not totally autonomous! it's just a big glorfied CNC machine.

[elster]

freecar said:

thinfourth2 said:

freecar said:

Funny, I don't remember many people having their hands on during the manufacture of precision turbine parts, generally the precision work is done by robot!

I'd love to see somebody spark eroding compressor blades by hand!

Of course if you mean the assembly of them then yes there are a few folks involved but they'd have nothing to do were it not for the robots who made nigh on all the parts!

What do you define as a robot?

Is a cnc machine a robot?

Is a washing machine a robot?

freecar said:

Or grinding the christmas tree!

of course not the tinsel gets stuck in the disc

Yes a cnc machine is a robot.

A washing machine is also a robot.

This really isn't hard, if a person is required for the machine to complete its entire operation then it is just a machine, if it can do the majority of its job without people then it is a robot.

Or do you consider that the only robots in manufacture are the ones with a big swinging arm that builds cars? A human is still required to unload the production line so not totally autonomous! it's just a big glorfied CNC machine.

In this instance this is exactly what the discussion is about.

[Digga]

In answer to the OP's question and the matter of robots, one of our firms builds digger buckets amongst other things (hence my PH handle) and, long story short, robot friendly the process aint.

A lot of firms have tried and gone bust to do these particular bits with robots. Perhaps when seam detection moves to the next level it may work, but for now it's good news for us and our welders: http://www.digbits.co.uk/excavator_buckets.htm