The workforce crisis in UK manufacturing is well known. Repeated surveys show that some 80% of UK manufacturers struggle to recruit the talents they need to compete and anticipate increasing recruitment pressures linked to the pace of technological change. They are also struggling to access the quantity and quality of provision necessary to upskill their current workforce.
Recognising that the value of its work to support innovation would be undermined unless industry could access the skilled workforce needed to exploit new technologies, the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult, with partners from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and TWI and support from the Gatsby Foundation, worked to identify and capture good practice on the development of the future workforce and how centres of innovation in other countries successfully contribute.
The Manufacturing the Future Workforce report, published today, finds that truly successful innovation is dependent on the availability of the right skills needed for its full exploitation. Built from much greater connectivity between stakeholders, it recommends a new approach involving better foresighting and forecasting of future needs and making significant improvements to learning delivery. The headline message is that centres of innovation have a unique contribution to make to a new Skills Value Chain.
Read the report here: https://hvm.catapult.org.uk/mtfw