The Make UK/BDO Q4 Manufacturing Outlook survey was released this week and concluded that the UK’s manufacturing sector is set to contract by -3.2% in 2023. This is due to what Make UK called a “perfect storm” driven by labor shortages, increased price of materials, and shrinking consumer and B2B demand as companies prepare for a recession. More than ever, the need for practical steps in cost reduction, such as asset utilization and energy efficiency, will serve as key drivers in surviving next year’s slowdown, while remaining competitive in the marketplace.
Key findings from the survey include:
- Manufacturing output is expected to contract by -3.2% in 2023 compared with a contraction of -4.4% earlier this year.
- The key drivers behind this decline are rising costs across the board, tighter fiscal policy, weakening consumer demand, and increased political uncertainty at home and abroad.
- Manufacturers remain reasonably confident about their own growth prospects over the next 12 months but are less optimistic about the general economy.
So what can you do about it? In this blog post, we want to share some of the ways that we’re helping our customers use data and analytics to improve their operations, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and ultimately survive in this challenging environment. The need to maintain current capital equipment and ensure a high productivity return on them is more critical than ever. AssetMinder can serve as a key contributor in increasing the utilization of your assets to ensure that maintenance routines are managed and predictive.
With AssetMinder Predict, you can tackle downtime by increasing the operating periods of your machines. Predict is able to do this by maintaining it only when needed, in comparison to scheduled maintenance which requires you to potentially lose on the productivity of your assets and factory. Through the use of predictive analytics, you can track the performance of all your assets and be alerted on different parameters (such as vibration or temperature) to detect when a machine might fail. This allows for preventative action early on to ensure the uptime and utilization of that machine.
Looking at rising energy costs, AssetMinder Impact is a strong asset for any manufacturer’s toolbelt. Impact allows companies a holistic understanding of their energy usage – not stopping at what the energy usage is but what is consuming that energy as well. When you receive data on both asset utilization and energy consumption, you can get the right information to take action in minimizing energy costs as a factor of production. This is important in directly tackling the bottom line of a company, but also aids in the profitability of what you’re selling.
With the challenges that lie ahead as we go into 2023, Konektio is positioned to support all of its clients during this critical period in UK’s manufacturing industry – ensuring they remain as profitable and competitive as possible throughout the European and global marketplaces.
About Konektio
Konektio connects the digital and physical worlds to digitally transform global industrial and manufacturing customers. Through their world-class expertise in IIoT automation solutions and services, including the IIoT SaaS product AssetMinder®, they help organizations succeed in their digital transformation journey by enabling visibility and control of their assets across the factory and externally in the field. AssetMinder® captures usage and performance data from smart digital sensors, providing advanced insights to unlock data-driven intelligence that optimizes processes, condition monitoring, uptime, and profitability across a range of industries including manufacturing, transportation, utilities, smart infrastructure, and food processing.
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