It should also incorporate a strengthened supply chain, investment in the latest processes, equipment, and products, engineering new and more productive ways of working and focusing on having a safe, highly trained, and well-motivated workforce.
Resilience is a key component of business competitiveness. It encompasses critical factors such as investment, productivity, and employment.
Obtaining a better and more informed understanding of the status of UK manufacturing resilience is an important starting point if we are to position our manufacturing base to benefit from sustained business resilience improvements.
Up until now, getting a handle on the insight that would help answer these questions was a challenge. Important information has been available, but it has been deposited in disparate places, without the means to connect what the data was collectively telling us, to help develop a clear and holistic view around the topic of UK manufacturing business resilience.
Acknowledging the significance of such landmark benchmarking is why RS Components commissioned research, presented in the Resilience Index, to undertake the task of bringing together yesterday’s data to tell today’s business resilience story.
The Resilience Index
The unique Resilience Index is a comprehensive examination of UK manufacturing resilience. Its exclusive insight is founded on a collection of 20 years of historical data sets that have resided in silos. But when brought together, they illuminate where the sector currently sits.
The research can help inform thinking by focusing on the trends that matter across three key areas: Plant (business investment), Process (productivity), and People. These are explored in a series of reports available online:
Plant
Process
People
They detail the actions senior engineers can take to build resilience across these areas. One action that underpins all three is the value strategic partners can bring.
As a strategic partner ourselves, RS is committed to assisting in this process. We work in partnership with manufacturers to enhance their operational efficiency by doing more with less and at the same time future proof operations.
Our strategic support can help deliver tangible resilience-linked results across a wide spectrum of infrastructure and operational areas. They include inventory, procurement and maintenance solutions, technical support, supplier relationships, extensive product ranges, PPE and safety products, supplier partnerships for training, and education programmes that can help make a difference.
The Resilience Index provides informed insight that now allows manufacturing stakeholders to form a view about where they currently stand when it comes to the strength of their individual business resilience.
And, critically, it illuminates what companies practically need to do to address improvement ambitions that will drive productivity, sustain competitiveness, and secure commercial success.
For more information about the Resilience Index, click here.