A new report to help UK manufacturers improve their non-labour resource productivity found that while many UK manufacturers have achieved 10 to 15% efficiency gains over the last decade, leading companies have achieved over 50% improvements in the same time frame.

The report identifies the significant untapped opportunity for UK manufacturing in non-labour resource efficiency and outlines a programme of action to address the barriers to uptake.

This opportunity was conservatively calculated to be worth £10 billion p.a. in additional profits for UK manufacturers, to create 300,000 new jobs and to reduce CO₂e emissions by 24% for the UK manufacturing sector (4.5% of UK’s total annual emissions).

The report was launched by the The Next Manufacturing Revolution , a not-for-profit collaboration between Lavery Pennell, the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing and 2degrees.  It summarises 12 months of research examining resource efficiency performance compared to international good practice for each sub-sector.

All manufacturing companies were found to have room for improvement:

• Four types of improvement were identified which are rarely all fully utilised: incremental improvement, process and system improvement, structural change and core redesign.
• Even leading companies are performing inconsistently across the resource efficiency topics examined of circular resource use, transport efficiency, energy efficiency, packaging optimisation, supply chain collaboration and resource efficient product & business model innovation.
• Wider benefits from the programme also accrue to communities including indirect jobs, greater tax revenues and an improved environment.

Based on this research, and supported by case studies from the private sector, Next Manufacturing Revolution (NMR) has developed a programme to help manufacturing companies realise these benefits, comprising three platforms.  The first is the NMR Community, which provides in-depth information, research and interactive information exchange forums, openly accessible to all. The second focuses on Barriers Resolution and Rollout, working collaboratively with experts and manufacturers to overcome industry obstacles that currently prevent the improvement of non-labour resource productivity, through a series of workshops. The third platform is Tailored Support which involves one-to-one advice for manufacturers seeking to identify improvement opportunities within their companies from non-labour resource management.

NMR now welcomes the involvement of companies and industry organisations who can participate to the extent that they wish, dependent upon their specific objectives and business planning needs.  The programme is accessible, flexible, and designed to deliver results consistent with those seen in case studies of best practice from the private sector.

Implementation of this programme is now underway; collaboration with government, member organisations, other NGOs, and publications will assist to accelerate this programme. Organisations and manufacturers seeking to participate can contact secretariat@nextmanufacturingrevolution.org.

You can download the full report here and read more about NMR at www.nextmanufacturingrevolution.org.

Thank you to Greg Lavery of Lavery Penell for this guest blog. 6heads is eager to support initiatives, like this one that can accelerate positive change towards a sustainable economy.