[Si Coe]

I was teaching in the Business studies room on Friday. It had a rather interesting poster on the wall showing all the different departments in a company. It was most amusing as it had HR, R&D, Customer Services, Marketing, Transport etc up top and right at the bottom, virtually an afterthought Production. And I felt that summed up the current problems in Manufacturing - compared to all the other departments actually making stuff is expensive and not obviously profitable (not when Marketing and Transport take a cut first) so most companies seem keen to do as little of it as possible!

Before I was a teacher I worked in industry - the factory I worked at had 400 staff, but only about 100 in actual production. Operations got moved to a massive plant in China, with over 2000 staff, 1800 in production. Thats why they make stuff cheaper, not labor rates but much more efficient use of their staff!