Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief,
With just over six weeks to go till MACH 2018 opens its doors at the NEC, news of what is going to be exhibited at the show is coming into the MTA offices think and fast. We’ve a feature on the MMMA (Metalforming Machinery Makers Association) area below. The MMMA, whose members focus on sheet metal forming, have a long history at MACH but this year their Pavilion has more than doubled in size – with 28 exhibitors – a mark of dynamic changes the technologies they represent are making.
The UK may be leaving the European Union but, if anything the MTA’s activities in Brussels will become even more important. Therefore, it is particularly pleasing to be able to announce that Marcus Burton, non-executive Director of Yamazaki Mazak and a Board member of the MTA, has become the Chairman of CECIMO’s influential Market Intelligence Committee. Marcus said: “European manufacturing is leading the world in industrial digitisation and new technologies. To preserve the competitiveness of our machine tool industry, we need to ensure a fair and open trade, a market attractive for foreign investment and high-tech innovation.”
Staying with matters European, the Brexit process continues to develop but although some outlines are beginning to emerge the lack of clarity remains the biggest problem. Various UK Ministers have made speeches over the last couple of weeks in the run up to another, major, one from the Prime Minister expected next week or the week after. EURIS, the umbrella organisation of which the MTA is a member, welcomed the priority given by Brexit Secretary David Davis to mutually recognised standards in his Vienna speech earlier in the week. That is a step forward but there is an urgent need to put a structure in place to enable industry to feed into Government on this, and other, issues. You can read more about EURIS below.
The MTA’s Head of External Affairs, Paul O’Donnell was on Radio 4’s Moneybox programme on Wednesday, explaining why the MTA believes that the impact of manufacturing on the economy is much bigger than the 10% GDP figure that is often quoted. You can listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwt5h .
Last week the MTA, along with a number of other Trade Associations, was targeted by a sophisticated phishing scam. This involved fake emails, which purported to come from an MTA account, asking members to click through. We immediately sent warning emails to all members and we believe the scam has been relatively unsuccessful, but it has provided a timely illustration of the need for all businesses to be cyber security aware. To that end we have partnered with the national Cyber Aware campaign to help spread some simple but effective best practice. You can find our more below.
New GDPR regulations controlling what you can and can’t do with data are coming into force in May. With that in mind MTA HR support partner, Croner, are staging an event in April which will look at the topic (and some other hot ones). Its aimed at helping you avoid expensive mistakes that other people have already made. You can find out more below.
That’s all for this week, have a good weekend.
