Friday Brief Intro 14/04/2023

Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s Friday Brief. We hope you had a wonderful Easter Break and a successful week back!

First up this week I’d like to welcome two new MTA Members! PEARSON SPARES & SERVICE LTD and HOFFMANN UK QUALITY TOOLS LIMITED have entered membership this week. Check out the story below to get the details on what they do.

Critique your existing employment contracts and employee handbook with Croner’s expert consultants. Their team will ensure that your business is protected. Croner will offer support options and suggest improvements that can be made to adapt to current legislation. Why not kick off the new financial year with a FREE review courtesy of Croner? Register a free space and find out more in the story.

Standards play an important role in the economy by facilitating business interaction and providing individuals and organizations with a basis for mutual understanding that facilitates communication, manufacturing and commerce. BSI standards committees are always open to applications for new members, and therefore we would like to invite all MTA members to participate and engage in BSI committees, where their knowledge and experience can be of benefit. If you are interested in participating in any of the standards committees listed in the story, then please do not hesitate to get in contact with Sami Ortiz at [email protected]. Find the list below.

A new BSI standard has been released. The proposal states: Robotics — Autonomous mobile robots for industrial environments — Communications and interoperability. Get the scope and purpose in the story below.

The National Physical Laboratory-led Manufacturing Measurement Network (MMN) and the UK Metamaterials Network are partnering to deliver a webinar on Tuesday 2nd May, 3-5pm, to highlight metamaterials, the opportunities that they could bring to industry, and the role that metrology plays in supporting the commercialisation of new materials. The webinar will explore applications of metamaterials including in communications, energy and more. To get more details on the webinar and read more about Metamaterials, go to the story below.

MACH 2024, the UK’s national event for inspiring, innovating and connecting manufacturing, has reached the landmark of just one year to go before the doors of the NEC, Birmingham open to start the show. In recognition of the landmark, and reaffirming its commitment to UK manufacturing, Lloyds Bank has confirmed its headline sponsorship of MACH for the sixth time. You won’t want to miss this press release so check it out below.

The theme of this week’s economic news is output with figures for manufacturing output in the UK and the slightly wider definition of industrial production for Europe. Both of these have a breakdown that gives us data for capital goods – the main market for most suppliers of manufacturing technology; this shows this sector is generally among the best performing in both areas, although it is far from spectacular, and that the problems lie elsewhere in the manufacturing sector. With the UK output data, we also get the February GDP numbers and this was surprisingly flat due mainly to a combination of an upgrade to the January numbers and strike action during the month.

We have a range of surveys running at the moment including the MTA Business Survey which you can find at www.mta.org.uk/mta-business-survey-mar23, the EIA Quarterly Survey at https://www.mta.org.uk/EIA-survey%20Q1-23 and the MTA biennial Service Engineers Charges survey – you can find more details and the form for this at https://www.mta.org.uk/resources/mta-service-engineers-charges-survey. Finally, for those companies in the Additive Manufacturing field, the bi-annual European AM Survey is also running and you can find the form for this at https://www.mta.org.uk/AM-trend-survey-Spring23. We hope you can find a few minutes to complete those which are relevant to you.

Finally, a last reminder about the MTA Spring Economic Update which takes place next Thursday (20th April) at the MTC in Coventry. You can find all the details you need, including the registration page – the event is free but you must register in advance as we have to provide the list of delegates to the MTC – at https://www.mta.org.uk/event/mta-spring-economic-update-2023.

That concludes the Friday Brief for this week! We hope you all have a great weekend and look forward to ‘seeing’ you again next week!

ECONOMIC NEWS – UK

UK Manufacturing Output , February 2023: Data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that manufacturing output was unchanged from the January level, with 7 of the 13 sub-sectors seeing output decline in February. These were led by the chemicals group with machinery also seeing a decline; however, one of the strongest growing […]

Welcome to The MTA!

The MTA has a two new Full Members, HOFFMANN UK QUALITY TOOLS LIMITED and PEARSON SPARES & SERVICE LTD. HOFFMANN UK QUALITY TOOLS LIMITED Europe’s leading system partner for quality tools, workstations and PPE with over 100,000 products available! We make our customers more successful by increasing productivity and simplifying the procurement of industrial tooling […]

One year to go! MACH 2024 Headline Sponsor Announced

MMN event 2nd May Metamaterials

BSI Standards

Please be advised that a New Work Item Proposal has been loaded to the BSI Standards Development Portal for comment. Any comments received will be submitted to the national committee AMT/10 “Robotics ” for consideration when deciding the UK response to the associated Standards Development Organisation. Proposal: Robotics — Autonomous mobile robots for industrial environments […]

CALL TO PARTICIPATE IN BSI STANDARDS COMMITTEES

Standards play an important role in the economy by facilitating business interaction and providing individuals and organizations with a basis for mutual understanding that facilitates communication, manufacturing and commerce. Standards matter to everyone and aid in making products and services safer with increased quality and have a more important than ever role to play in trade following Brexit. […]

Power Up Your Policies & Documents Exclusive offer for partners in April

Are your internal policies in need of some attention? Why not kick off the new financial year with a FREE review courtesy of Croner? Critique your existing employment contracts and employee handbook with our expert consultants. Our team will ensure that your business is protected. Croner will offer support options and suggest improvements that can […]

Friday Brief