Manufacturing advisory service set to help more UK manufacturers

This represents a 61 per cent increase over three-year-old MAS’ current performance, an ambitious goal, but Government believes it possible as MAS has proven it can deliver. “The key to the success of MAS has been providing a service for manufacturers by manufacturers, and reaching those small firms that in the past have been hard to contact,” said Industry Minister Alun Michael. “The service has achieved much more than we dared to hope, which gives us good cause to be even more ambitious in helping manufacturers in the future. In its first three years, the DTI’s MAS programme has fielded some 56,000 enquiries from manufacturers, made 11,000 on-site visits, 3,000 of which have been in-depth consultations of up to 10 days. The DTI said that of the companies that have used MAS’ services, a quarter have improved their productivity, a third have increased their stock turnover and nearly half have seen improvements in the effectiveness of their equipment. MAS has launched an upgraded, more advanced website (www.mas.dti.gov.uk), encouraging more UK manufacturers to take advantage of the support available across a wide range of manufacturing disciplines.