45 www.drivesncontrols.com March 2026 For the past decade, the industrial automation world has been obsessed with the next “big thing”. Like all industries, the latest innovation or most modern invention is what sets market-leaders apart from those who fall behind. From digital twins, AIdriven-optimisation and predictive maintenance to autonomous everything, the conveyor belt of innovation never stops. Yet for all the noise, the UK’s productivity curve remains stubbornly flat. At events and meetings that I attend, I always hear manufacturers saying similar things: “We know what we should be doing… we’re just not doing it yet.” It’s time for us to admit the uncomfortable truth. Our biggest barrier isn’t technology. It’s nerve. The comfort zone is costing us, and time kills all deals. The longer we leave it, the worse it will get. Walk into any UK factory and you’ll find pockets of brilliance – a pilot project here, a clever retrofit there, but there is rarely a bold, organisation-wide leap. Instead, we see incrementalism dressed up as transformation. A new dashboard. A slightly smarter sensor. A trial that never scales. Why? Because genuine change demands discomfort. It demands leadership teams willing to disrupt their own processes, challenge long‑held assumptions, and invest in outcomes that won’t materialise within a single financial year. Too often, the appetite for innovation is high until it threatens the status quo. We have more capability at our fingertips than at any point in industrial history. Automation hardware is more modular. Software is more interoperable. Data is more accessible. Even AI is now a practical tool for engineers on the ground. So, if technology were the limiting factor, the UK would be leading the productivity charts. Instead, we’re still debating whether to upgrade 20-year-old PLCs. The truth is that the tools are ready. It’s the decision‑making culture that isn’t. The real competitive advantage is, without a doubt, decisiveness. Manufacturers who win in the next decade won’t be the ones with the most advanced technology stacks. They’ll be the ones who act with conviction. The ones who stop waiting for perfect interoperability and start building pragmatic bridges. Those who accept that transformation is messy, iterative and occasionally uncomfortable, but deal with it pragmatically. To excel above the competition, a business needs to empower its engineers to experiment rather than justify. Recognise that doing nothing is now the riskiest strategy of all. We need a new industrial mindset. If the UK wants to reclaim its position as a global manufacturing leader, we must shift from a culture of caution to one of calculated boldness. If manufacturers treat digital transformation as a strategic imperative, not a side-project, by rewarding experimentation as well as efficiency and investing in people as much as in platforms, then it will be much easier to demonstrate the return on investment through productivity and profit. Making decisions based on long‑term competitiveness, not short‑term convenience, could become a key factor over the coming years. Walk into any plant and you’ll find brilliant engineers doing brilliant things – clever retrofits, inventive pilot projects, and dashboards that would make NASA jealous. But too often, these sparks never ignite into full‑scale transformation. Instead, we see organisations stuck in permanent “pilot mode,” endlessly testing, tweaking and tuning, but never switching to run. It is essential for industry, now more than ever, to adopt the courage to commit, not just the technology. The technology, the workforce and the opportunities are all present, but without our minds, we won’t achieve. n We need a new industrial mindset If the UK wants to reclaim its position as a global manufacturing leader, it needs to shift from a culture of caution to one of calculated boldness, argues Nikesh Mistry*, Gambica’s sector head for automation. ‘If technology were the limiting factor, the UK would be leading the productivity charts. Instead, we’re still debating whether to upgrade 20-year-old PLCs.’ * Gambica is the trade association for the automation, control, instrumentation and laboratory technology sectors in the UK. You can get in touch with Nikesh Mistry on 020 7642 8094 or nikesh.mistry@gambica.org.uk, or via the Gambica Web site: www.gambica.org.uk
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