UK manufacturing must invest in automation to sustain growth

The UK manufacturing sector has finally stepped out of the subdued trend of recent years to see the best month of output growth since Jun 2014.

The latest Markit / CIPS UK Purchasing Manager’s Index report states the growth in October was one of the steepest registered during the 24 year survey history.

It has been a tough time for the UKs manufacturers, however latest figures show promising turnaround, but how can this industry ensure this upwards trend continues?

Across many industries there is a requirement to achieve more with less, and this is certainly true with manufacturing. These businesses need to be as efficient as possible to ensure high productivity without spiralling costs.

Just-in-Time and Lean Manufacturing have been around for quite some time. The growing OEM industry in developing parts of the world has led to an increasingly global manufacturing process. When a supply chain is split across different companies, in manufacturing, often in different parts of the world, transactional data needs to be exchanged across various different systems causing major headaches and often delays to the supply chain.

EDI and automation is key in achieving these business objectives and ensuring manufacturing is as productive as possible.

EDI provides an automated transfer of business documents to support these manufacturing processes. Having visibility of stock levels and delivery notifications are critical for the production line to make these streamlined manufacturing processes a success.