This month, we express concern that during the next 10 years 40,000 defence jobs from an estimated total of 155,000 are to go in the south-west of England. It is the UK’s most defence-dependent region, we observe. So it is no surprise that diversification and technology transfer were central elements of the recent Defence Components and Equipment Exhibition at the NEC, Birmingham, that ran alongside the Automan and Inspex shows. But we recall similar, unfulfilled, diversification efforts in the ‘70s, hence, perhaps, the reason that we see this major job threat appearing now, we suggest. There is a problem and it needs a solution, Machinery sagely observes.
Also this month, a shadow continues to be cast over the UK machine tool industry by the so-called arms-to-Iraq affair. This revealed that official sanction for arms sales by British companies to Iraq had been given; the government initially denied this. Key was the supply of dual-use equipment, machine tools, by Coventrybased Matrix Churchill (remnants are within the Machine Tool Technology Group) and Brighton-based FMT (defunct). We wax lyrical about these companies’ unfortunate plight and situation.
Staying with machine tools and associated equipment, and Japan’s Nisshinbo, a punch press and laser profiler maker, has announced its intention to build machines in the UK; UK firm BnB Machine Tools of Leicester is building a plasma profiler; Kitagawa Europe has started making chucks in Salisbury; a previous article on PC control for CNC machine tools draws both supporting and critical comment; and in international news, we carry a report about the Taiwanese machine tool industry’s ambition to boost its manufacture of CNC models and also bump up its world ranking for production and export of machine tools.
On more general manufacturing matters, the EEF and CBI are looking at merging to provide a unified voice for manufacturing. We are amazed that it has taken so long for the realisation that such is necessary. But we highlight that METCOM, a collective of 30 trade associations, already presents a unified voice at UK and European level, and is intent on expanding further, while we highlight other, separate collective efforts. This apparent competition in representation of manufacturing industry is not good, we say.
And in a sign of the times, there’s government money available to manufacturing companies to help them adopt best practice – long gone is direct support for investment in manufacturing technology.
Training also gets a full page of news this issue, with various initiatives, support and surveys given coverage.
In features this month, we: preview the EMO exhibition in Paris, in which we offer an east and west Germany post-unification analysis, while also looking at the country that was the USSR (now the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) is modernising; reveal how European gear makers have set up a fighting fund to resist the USA’s protectionist moves in this area, also how gear manufacturing technology is evolving and, additionally, how three UK gear making subcontractors operate; look at the benefits of lathes with second operation capability, turning centres; and report on the first UK installation of a Tsugami MTA3 Barfiex machine, a turning centre with a single tool carrying unit, 128-tool magazine and strong milling capability that can be bar fed or carry a pallet on its main spindle unit.
As part of our EMO coverage, we profile Renishaw, specifically its efficient approach to UK-based manufacturing, which, of course, continues to this day.
Timeline, June '91:
- Boris Yeltsin elected president of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
- Korean carmaker Kia begins importing cars to the UK for the first time
- The National Gallery (London) opens new Sainsbury Wing to public
- Final breakthrough in Channel Tunnel as last clay section bored away in south rail tunnel
- Slovenia and Croatia declare independence from Yugoslavia
- Dame Peggy Ashcroft, actress (A passage to India), dies, 83
