Warren East warns aerospace supply chain must modernise
In an interview with The Manufacturer, Warren East has said smaller companies in the supply chain need to move quickly to embrace the technologies that make up Industry 4.0 or be overtaken by more savvy competitors. His warning comes after the Aerospace Growth Partnership noted in its latest publication Means of Ascent,
that smaller companies are not doing as well as they think they are, nor as well their larger prime customers want them to.
Copyright Rolls-Royce
Warren East (above) told The Manufacturer
: “The reality is that when you get a new wave of technology that we can loosely bucket as Industry 4.0, there’s a heck of a lot of investment required and some smaller companies just cannot afford that step for some time,” he said. “There will be new entrants who are able to embrace that change and the ones who are unable to do so will probably suffer, because actually that technology does pay off, it does make for a more competitive operation, and the people further up the value chain will seek out the most competitive suppliers. So those who invest, and embrace a means to achieve a more competitive output will be the favoured ones. That’s how the market works.”
The world of manufacturing is undergoing a pervasive and substantial evolution. Not since the first industrial revolution has the change been as expansive as that being seeing today. One of the core tenets of this new age of manufacturing is the adoption of data analytics and a more wide-scale use of business intelligence (BI).
Rapidly, data is becoming the core of modern success. However utilising data analytics for business growth is challenging, particularly in the world of manufacturing.
“These issues are particularly common across the sector” said Steve Whittle, head of business intelligence at Rolls-Royce, who offered some insight into the best approach when implementing and utilising a strong data analytics system.
“You need to look at things holistically, not a single point; what you want to know is; where have I been, where am I now, where am I going to go, how will I know when I have achieved what I set out to achieve and now can I measure that?”
The Manufacturer
will showcase all aspects of Industry 4.0 and what this means for UK Manufacturing on November 2-3 at the NEC alongside The Advanced Engineering Show and The Manufacturer Annual leaders conference (TMALC).