Good morning and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief.
Firstly, we would like to say Happy Birthday to ourselves, this coming Monday (15th April) marks the 100th Anniversary of the formation of the MTA. Members of the Association past and present have come together to contribute to a new book ‘At The Heart Of Manufacturing’ which charts the history of the Association from its inception until now. Every MTA member has been posted a copy, so if you haven’t received your copy of this fascinating book get in touch.
The MTA will be hosting the first of our open access Technology Days will take place on 22nd May at the Jaguar Experience - Castle Bromwich. The half day event aims to promote the benefits of additive and digital manufacturing technologies and connect companies looking to work with our members and the wider industry. To find out how you can get involved please see the story below.
Staying with MTA events, our Spring Update presentation this year will be held on Tuesday 30th April at the premises of Fanuc UK in Coventry. The keynote presentation will be by Andy Goodwin from Oxford Economics who will give an overview of the economic situation, including, of course, some estimates of the likely impact of Brexit – whatever and whenever that might yet turn out to be! You can register for this event via the MTA web-site at https://www.mta.org.uk/event/mta-spring-economic-update.
So on to Brexit, it has been another eventful week in Westminster and Brussels as a delay to Brexit has been agreed until 31st October 2019. Our Head of External Affairs Paul O’Donnell takes a closer look.
The MTA Sponsor the University of Wolverhampton F3 Team Racing Team and last week their season got off to a great start. Continuing their dominant form at Donington Park, UWR secured three P2’s from three races, and 2nd place in the championship behind the 2018 winner, Cian Carey.
The 2019 Racing Wolves F3 Cup team is made up mostly of first-year engineering students who have spent the winter months training and preparing for the season ahead. The MTA support the excellent work done by the University in encouraging more people to undertake career in engineering and give them the best possible experience of being part of the only professional race team in the UK made up of students.
EMO is just a few short months away and we have some more information on what technologies will be on show in Hannover. This week a look at Dry and Minimal Quantity Lubricant Machining.
In response to growing cyber security threats posed by the growth Industry 4.0 and the development of Smart Factories, Cranfield University has launched an MSc course in Cyber-Secure Manufacturing for industry engineers/managers to help protect their systems and machines. Find out more details on this below.
We work closely with BSI on standards applicable to our members, at the moment BSI are developing standards PAS 6010, 6011 & 6012 on Additive Manufacturing and they would like your feedback, see the story below to get involved.
The manufacturing output data released by the ONS this week showed that while there was modest growth for manufacturing as a whole, this was largely in industries that are of little direct relevance to MTA members, most notably Pharmaceuticals and Scotch Whisky. The Capital Goods sub-sector as a whole was the only one to have negative trends and within that, only the Machinery industry had any growth in it at all. In parallel, the monthly GDP data for the UK economy showed that modest growth is continuing, but that the picture is mixed with services improving while construction showed a decline in the latest 3 month period. The latest data from the USA shows that the demand for cutting tools has continued to grow strongly in the first couple of months of the year and although machinery activity seems to have levelled off, it is at a very high level. Finally this week, data on productivity in the UK shows a small improvement in 2018 for both the service and manufacturing sectors of the economy.
That’s all for this week, have a great weekend from everyone at the MTA.
