Near the top of the list of worries that keep many manufacturing bosses awake at night is hiring and retaining the right talent for an industry being overwhelmed by helter skelter technological change. Recruiting enough people was already a problem in a tight labour market, but the emphasis is increasingly moving away from the number to getting hold of staff
The manufacturing sector has more experience of significant non-human involvement in its research, operations and administration than almost any other after decades using data analysis, machine learning and robotics. Now AI is being used to harness the power of these well-established methods to reshape traditional manufacturing processes. This is ushering the industry into a new era of intelligent automation in
Figures for December 2023 published by The Insolvency Service have confirmed that 2023 was a record year for business failures. The annual total of 26,595 corporate insolvency filings is just a little higher than the previous record of 26,556 set in 2009 at the peak of the global financial crisis. This figure is 14% above 2022 and 43% up on
The vitriolic aggression associated for so long with the UK’s decision to leave the European Union has largely dissipated. There is now a continuing and largely constructive debate about the true impact of Brexit on the key UK manufacturing sector, which accounts for around a tenth of GDP, especially in the near parallel context of the pandemic and its effects.
In this month’s business overview, we take a look back on 2023 and investigate what growth predictions might be made for the coming year An unwelcome last minute GDP revision from the ONS harks a coming recession A quarterly movement of 0.1% in the UK’s GDP is not normally the stuff of media headlines, but when the Office for National
A driver shortage in the trucking industry is nothing new. From the very start, the job has been seen as an unattractive option with its long and anti-social hours, primitive working (and living) conditions and poor job satisfaction. The current statistics for road haulage drivers There are just over 400,000 registered HGV vehicles according to the Road Haulage Association (RHA),
