British Manufacturing!
Discussion
Digga said:
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
Interesting, so what do you feel is the issue for what seems a relatively simple part to make?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
freecar said:
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.
Well up here in aberdeen which is in scotland so could only have maybe 10,000 folk working i know of more then 27 CNC machinesA 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.
I don't think they are classing a CNC machine as a robot
EINSIGN said:
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?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.
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?
Whilst it's all very well pointing out that the big money is in designing the high end kit, the vast majority of the UK populus simply aren't going to be employed designing iPhones or performing stem cell research.
In my opinion we need a more diverse economy with more room for manufacturing as ultimately, we need a broad range of jobs that cater for all abilities.
Based on what I see of the workforce when trying to recruit for call centre work, if we expect to have a profitable "knowledge" and science based economy with huge numbers gainfully employed designing new medical treatments and electronics, we're f
ked.Use Psychology said:
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.Blue Oval84 said:
This ^
Whilst it's all very well pointing out that the big money is in designing the high end kit, the vast majority of the UK populus simply aren't going to be employed designing iPhones or performing stem cell research.
In my opinion we need a more diverse economy with more room for manufacturing as ultimately, we need a broad range of jobs that cater for all abilities.
Based on what I see of the workforce when trying to recruit for call centre work, if we expect to have a profitable "knowledge" and science based economy with huge numbers gainfully employed designing new medical treatments and electronics, we're fked.
Apple employs 66000 people, how many of those do we think "just design"? If we can employ 66k from just making square bits of plastic and running 300 odd shops, how many could we employ with stem cell derived products?Whilst it's all very well pointing out that the big money is in designing the high end kit, the vast majority of the UK populus simply aren't going to be employed designing iPhones or performing stem cell research.
In my opinion we need a more diverse economy with more room for manufacturing as ultimately, we need a broad range of jobs that cater for all abilities.
Based on what I see of the workforce when trying to recruit for call centre work, if we expect to have a profitable "knowledge" and science based economy with huge numbers gainfully employed designing new medical treatments and electronics, we're f
ked.Fundamentally, we are not going to compete with China/India/Africa for low paid manual labour and even if we could it wouldn’t pull us out of the mire we are in.
Why are we even talking about un skilled jobs when the whole point of this thread is about robots, which can do any repetitive factory job much cheaper (over time) than any person.
Demand for unskilled labour in this country is not about to increase (if it did it would be filled poles), so we need to make sure that school levers have skills in areas that we will need in the future. Its shocking that in this area, kids can leave school and be unable to read.
thinfourth2 said:
freecar said:
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.
Well up here in aberdeen which is in scotland so could only have maybe 10,000 folk working i know of more then 27 CNC machinesA 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.
I don't think they are classing a CNC machine as a robot
Anyway you essentially proclaimed that all machines are good for is fake dog poo and I pointed out the flaw in that statement. Trying to get me to define a machine differently to the article changes nothing, your issue with machines is a facile one, they are quantifiably better at the tasks that they perform than we are, which is why they are used.
As it happens I think the article was incuding CNC machines, there's nothing in the text to suggest otherwise except for the photo of the robot arm which isn't exactly conclusive! If you read through the sources for the article they mention all forms of automation which begins at a very basic level.
Personally I think the article is contradictory, in one sentence it is saying that the only way other countries can compete is through automation yet in another it recognises that some tasks are beyond the design of efficient automation and would be more expensive to implement. I think a lot of UK industry falls into the latter category. The only reasons for automation are for accuracy, repetitivity or speed, which is why CNC has taken off so well as it fulfills all three reasons. Unless you're making thousands and thousands of parts CNC is sometimes as far as you need to go.
Use Psychology said:
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.
There are two side to every story, the EPSRC criticism to me sounds partially sensible partially ivory tower academics engaging is wish fulfilment. king 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.
The UK has a strong history of excellent research, notably look at the number of Nobel prizes. The issue is that we are excellent at fundamental science terrible at making any money out of it.
Part of what the EPSRC is trying to do is to make more research relevant to actual real world outcomes. These scientists are actually campaigning against this.
Fortunately they aren't winning the argument, more of the UK's research funds are being spent in collaborative manner between government, industry and academia.
Ozzie Osmond said:
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.
We do have an awful legacy that has left us with some of the best top end manufacturing in the world and enormous levels of 'cottage' manufacturing but very little of the modern big factory, simple item kind of manufacturing that was traditionally put bread and butter for exporting but has been dead since the 70s. 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.
It died in essence because of our classic British mentality. A refusal to accept that things change combined with a refusal to invest in infrastructure.
However, look around the average family home and we see that most of us use German lightbulbs or German baby bottles etc.
This is all bread and butter stuff that a modern factory could churn out day and night. We even have the advantage over the Germans with regards to our access to more sea ports and more cheaply.
However there is another problem with the British and that is that they struggle to fly to another country and sell a product let alone come home an then make it.
The Germans are exceedingly competent at selling their exports and opening new markets.
If we focussed on those skills we certainly have the tech, finance and space to tool up and start manufacturing more.
Just go to India and you'll see that they are importing s
t loads from Germany and its all stuff that we could build here. Sadly, we have a total mental block in our society that whenever manufacturing is mentioned people seem to want to bring back the Victorian days of thousands of people doing manual labour in sweat shops or down holes.
A good example of logical modern manufacturing is the pharmaceutical industry. We earn a lot from the top end 'design' and then use robots and very low labour numbers to churn the product out and flog it abroad.
Until we actually start to look forward and go out into the market place and look at what the BRICs are importing and calculating whether we could set up and steal that business then not a lot is going change.
Edited by DonkeyApple on Saturday 14th January 20:48
freecar said:
Do you know how statistics work? I'm sure they didn't measure it city by city.
Anyway you essentially proclaimed that all machines are good for is fake dog poo and I pointed out the flaw in that statement. Trying to get me to define a machine differently to the article changes nothing, your issue with machines is a facile one, they are quantifiably better at the tasks that they perform than we are, which is why they are used.
As it happens I think the article was incuding CNC machines, there's nothing in the text to suggest otherwise except for the photo of the robot arm which isn't exactly conclusive! If you read through the sources for the article they mention all forms of automation which begins at a very basic level.
I would be utterly shocked if we only had 27 CNC mills per 10,000 of workers I can't see how it could even be vaguely accurate with the amount of stuff we make.Anyway you essentially proclaimed that all machines are good for is fake dog poo and I pointed out the flaw in that statement. Trying to get me to define a machine differently to the article changes nothing, your issue with machines is a facile one, they are quantifiably better at the tasks that they perform than we are, which is why they are used.
As it happens I think the article was incuding CNC machines, there's nothing in the text to suggest otherwise except for the photo of the robot arm which isn't exactly conclusive! If you read through the sources for the article they mention all forms of automation which begins at a very basic level.
I think they are using a very tight definition of a robot.
That said there are 6 robots about a mile from my house in the local farm that milk the cows
Edited by thinfourth2 on Saturday 14th January 21:05
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.
Agreed, but the country is saddled with huge numbers of unemployed people that we pay benefits to. Britain is also saddled with a huge balance of payments issue. So the best way to address is this to try to bring in manufacturing jobs used to make the day to day goods that everybody needs and use the green belt for growing crops and other farming activities.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.
Ultimately nobody is going to buy goods if they are too expensive, so automating as much of the process as possible is the answer, but that then also gives a boost to the automation and machine tool industries.
Talksteer said:
There are two side to every story, the EPSRC criticism to me sounds partially sensible partially ivory tower academics engaging is wish fulfilment.
The UK has a strong history of excellent research, notably look at the number of Nobel prizes. The issue is that we are excellent at fundamental science terrible at making any money out of it.
Part of what the EPSRC is trying to do is to make more research relevant to actual real world outcomes. These scientists are actually campaigning against this.
Fortunately they aren't winning the argument, more of the UK's research funds are being spent in collaborative manner between government, industry and academia.
There used to be many UK government research institutes that can do the science the government needs. We need to make a distinction between funding science that is the equivalent of road-building - stuff the country needs now - and funding blue skies research, which ultimately is where advances that improve society come from. Not because people are looking for applications or products or whatever, but because (the best) curiosity driven research generates new and unexpected ideas. At the time of discovery these ideas may not have obvious relevance, but in the future they may well do (many examples... to pick two: production of vulcanised rubber 50 years before the first car even existed, and the invention of the LASER).The UK has a strong history of excellent research, notably look at the number of Nobel prizes. The issue is that we are excellent at fundamental science terrible at making any money out of it.
Part of what the EPSRC is trying to do is to make more research relevant to actual real world outcomes. These scientists are actually campaigning against this.
Fortunately they aren't winning the argument, more of the UK's research funds are being spent in collaborative manner between government, industry and academia.
What the government should really do, if it wants applied research, is start paying for it rather than robbing the money for it from blue skies fundamental research. to do that is short termist in the extreme.
I am obviously an interested party here so of course there is some element of self-interest in these opinions, but I do truly believe that fundamental research is best funded by government. Paying for it is like a lottery (or a lucky dip). You might not win something every time, but every so often you will win BIG, and so big the costs pale into insignificance (e.g. lasers, quantum mechanics, etc.).
Having been involved in manufacturing and engineering in particular for 25 years now, it’s quite obvious where the problems lie.
Management who don’t know what they are doing. Senior people who have no idea as to what the product actually is. You can see this quite clearly with the collapse of Railtrack. A company that had at one stage not a single long term experienced technical “rail person” on its board of 15(?). 3 lawyers mind…
Management who can talk the talk and meetings with them is just like playing wk bingo. Actually doing anything seems to be beyond them. A mate calls it “giving good overhead”.
A weak and ineffective manufacturing support system. Yes DTI, I am pointing the finger at you.
A silence as to how our some of European cousins do business. No further clues eh Pierre! A previous place of employment had serious problem getting an order from a navy in South East Asia, as we had run out of “cash inducements” for the admirals compared to our European competition.
Unions, which were required a few decades ago, but have become more hindrance than help. Although its really only the public sector where they haven’t changed.
A society which doesn’t value quality. There are loads of high streets which are full of shops that sell crap for a pound.
As others have alluded to, manufacturing is seen as dirty, smelly, poorly paid work. We have a supplier which is handing over £50k p.a. to their cnc machinists on shifts. That’s not too shabby. It’s a long time since I have been around a grubby factory. Most of them are spick and span, and many of our suppliers are running 4 and 5 axis machining centres.
However the general malaise has been like this in the UK for over a 100 years now, read Corelli Barnett’s Audit of War for the full details.
Will it get better? – Of course it will, but it has to get a lot worse for much of the population first. This is happening right now. Pay rises of 1% for the public sector for the next 2 years at least and inflation at 5%. That’s an 8-9% pay cut in real terms.
And on that cheery note…..
Management who don’t know what they are doing. Senior people who have no idea as to what the product actually is. You can see this quite clearly with the collapse of Railtrack. A company that had at one stage not a single long term experienced technical “rail person” on its board of 15(?). 3 lawyers mind…
Management who can talk the talk and meetings with them is just like playing w
k bingo. Actually doing anything seems to be beyond them. A mate calls it “giving good overhead”.A weak and ineffective manufacturing support system. Yes DTI, I am pointing the finger at you.
A silence as to how our some of European cousins do business. No further clues eh Pierre! A previous place of employment had serious problem getting an order from a navy in South East Asia, as we had run out of “cash inducements” for the admirals compared to our European competition.
Unions, which were required a few decades ago, but have become more hindrance than help. Although its really only the public sector where they haven’t changed.
A society which doesn’t value quality. There are loads of high streets which are full of shops that sell crap for a pound.
As others have alluded to, manufacturing is seen as dirty, smelly, poorly paid work. We have a supplier which is handing over £50k p.a. to their cnc machinists on shifts. That’s not too shabby. It’s a long time since I have been around a grubby factory. Most of them are spick and span, and many of our suppliers are running 4 and 5 axis machining centres.
However the general malaise has been like this in the UK for over a 100 years now, read Corelli Barnett’s Audit of War for the full details.
Will it get better? – Of course it will, but it has to get a lot worse for much of the population first. This is happening right now. Pay rises of 1% for the public sector for the next 2 years at least and inflation at 5%. That’s an 8-9% pay cut in real terms.
And on that cheery note…..
thinfourth2 said:
freecar said:
Do you know how statistics work? I'm sure they didn't measure it city by city.
Anyway you essentially proclaimed that all machines are good for is fake dog poo and I pointed out the flaw in that statement. Trying to get me to define a machine differently to the article changes nothing, your issue with machines is a facile one, they are quantifiably better at the tasks that they perform than we are, which is why they are used.
As it happens I think the article was incuding CNC machines, there's nothing in the text to suggest otherwise except for the photo of the robot arm which isn't exactly conclusive! If you read through the sources for the article they mention all forms of automation which begins at a very basic level.
I would be utterly shocked if we only had 27 CNC mills per 10,000 of workers I can't see how it could even be vaguely accurate with the amount of stuff we make.Anyway you essentially proclaimed that all machines are good for is fake dog poo and I pointed out the flaw in that statement. Trying to get me to define a machine differently to the article changes nothing, your issue with machines is a facile one, they are quantifiably better at the tasks that they perform than we are, which is why they are used.
As it happens I think the article was incuding CNC machines, there's nothing in the text to suggest otherwise except for the photo of the robot arm which isn't exactly conclusive! If you read through the sources for the article they mention all forms of automation which begins at a very basic level.
I think they are using a very tight definition of a robot.
That said there are 6 robots about a mile from my house in the local farm that milk the cows
Edited by thinfourth2 on Saturday 14th January 21:05
It's not like the report claimed that in manufacturing there are only 27 robots per 10,000.
Besides, the article is contradictory and hardly accurate so I'm not treating it as though it is the holy grail to rescuing Britain from the financial black hole were in.
Either way, your point about what machines were good for was b
ks and that was all I was interested in correcting.To answer the OP; first of all be very wary of those numbers.
Different countries and different companies often have very different ideas about what a robot is. For example a Japanese company I once worked for called just about any automated machine a "robot".
Also different industries and different employment laws often dictate different ammounts of automation. Some French companies for example often invest heavily in automation because both employing people in the first place, dismissal and redundancy are much harder than elsewhere.
Given the above that list is probably indicative of nothing whatsoever regarding British manufacturing.
Different countries and different companies often have very different ideas about what a robot is. For example a Japanese company I once worked for called just about any automated machine a "robot".
Also different industries and different employment laws often dictate different ammounts of automation. Some French companies for example often invest heavily in automation because both employing people in the first place, dismissal and redundancy are much harder than elsewhere.
Given the above that list is probably indicative of nothing whatsoever regarding British manufacturing.
Ozzie Osmond said:
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.
But Ozzie, I thought it was all Thatchers fault? 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.
freecar said:
Why be shocked, what about all the people who work in finance, retail and the like, not many robots there.
FinanceHave you seen what a modern printer/photocopier can do? All that sorting, hole punching and stapling it meets my definition of a robot
But i'm pretty certain they haven't counted those as robots
freecar said:
Besides, the article is contradictory and hardly accurate so I'm not treating it as though it is the holy grail to rescuing Britain from the financial black hole were in.
We agree its a bks reportfreecar said:
Either way, your point about what machines were good for was bks and that was all I was interested in correcting.
I stand by the point.ks and that was all I was interested in correcting.If they are counting 27 robots per 10,000 workers then they must have a tight definition of robot. So they are probably counting things that look like this
And are probably ignoring robots that look like this
And I'm certaining they are ignoring these
In the UK we don't make much stuff where the swingy arm yellow thing is perfect as they are used for stamping out cars/rubber dog s
t in exactly the same way for a few years where as the UK is great at high precision small production runs. Like making jet engines etcEINSIGN said:
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?
A lot of the product China is making is for non-Chinese companies, it's not about them 'allowing' the profit to go elsewhere. Apple design in California but have stuff made in China, they only do that because it's cheap. For China to keep more of the profit they have to learn to create, design and market product themselves.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?
BTW the UK is also AAA rated.
freecar said:
thinfourth2 said:
freecar said:
Do you know how statistics work? I'm sure they didn't measure it city by city.
Anyway you essentially proclaimed that all machines are good for is fake dog poo and I pointed out the flaw in that statement. Trying to get me to define a machine differently to the article changes nothing, your issue with machines is a facile one, they are quantifiably better at the tasks that they perform than we are, which is why they are used.
As it happens I think the article was incuding CNC machines, there's nothing in the text to suggest otherwise except for the photo of the robot arm which isn't exactly conclusive! If you read through the sources for the article they mention all forms of automation which begins at a very basic level.
I would be utterly shocked if we only had 27 CNC mills per 10,000 of workers I can't see how it could even be vaguely accurate with the amount of stuff we make.Anyway you essentially proclaimed that all machines are good for is fake dog poo and I pointed out the flaw in that statement. Trying to get me to define a machine differently to the article changes nothing, your issue with machines is a facile one, they are quantifiably better at the tasks that they perform than we are, which is why they are used.
As it happens I think the article was incuding CNC machines, there's nothing in the text to suggest otherwise except for the photo of the robot arm which isn't exactly conclusive! If you read through the sources for the article they mention all forms of automation which begins at a very basic level.
I think they are using a very tight definition of a robot.
That said there are 6 robots about a mile from my house in the local farm that milk the cows
Edited by thinfourth2 on Saturday 14th January 21:05
It's not like the report claimed that in manufacturing there are only 27 robots per 10,000.
Besides, the article is contradictory and hardly accurate so I'm not treating it as though it is the holy grail to rescuing Britain from the financial black hole were in.
Either way, your point about what machines were good for was b
ks and that was all I was interested in correcting.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff