Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
We have published a new edition of our Economic Report this week, which gives a round-up of the latest data affecting our sector in the UK at various levels – you can download this from the item below.
MACH 2020 takes place 20th – 24th April at the NEC in Birmingham and exhibition space in the Halls for the UK’s premier manufacturing technologies showcase is now available. Sales of non-balloted space opened during MACH 2018 and over 5000m² has already been added to the floor plans. Contact the MACH 2020 sales team for more details.
The main item of economic news this week is the encouraging pick-up in activity that is reported by the CBI Industrial trends survey where they note that output growth was at its strongest level of the year so far and order books strengthened to their highest in 5 months. There is more detail in the article below where we also take a look at the latest trends for exports and imports of the products of our key customer industries in the Engineering sector.
Last week about 200 guests, among them machine tool and robot manufacturers and users, met at Imperial College of London for the event “Manufacturing Technologies & Robotics: the future is now”, organised by UCIMU-SISTEMI PER PRODURRE, the Italian machine tools, robots and automation systems manufacturers' association. You can find out all about the event in the story below.
In conjunction with the Through-Life Engineering Services Council (‘TES Council’) and the Institute of Asset Management (‘IAM’), Cranfield University is undertaking a 2018 Maturity Assessment of through-life maintenance strategies. They would like MTA members to help them with their research by completing the survey within the Brief.
That’s all for this week, have a great weekend from everyone at the MTA and we’ll be back next Friday with more industry news.