News June/July 2023 www.pwemag.co.uk Plant & Works Engineering | 07 and harnessing technology to improve efficiency. The top three challenges respondents cited as expecting to affect them over the next 12 months were attracting talent (47% inflation and higher costs (47%), and supply chain disruption (40 %). But the report also delves into a key issue: drivers of unscheduled downtime and its cost to a business. Ageing assets and mechanical failures are the biggest drivers of unscheduled downtime, and the report revealed: Nearly 20 hours are spent each week on unscheduled maintenance, compared with around 18 hours spent each week on scheduled maintenance The average hourly cost of downtime is £5121.81 (ranges from c. £1700 to £7.5k depending on size of business) The average weekly cost of unscheduled downtime is £100,371 Organisations need to get a grip on maintenance spend, as nearly a third of respondents do not know what proportion of their annual operating budget is spent on maintenance; 30% state approximately 5% – 10% is spent. Survey respondents cited the highest priority plans for decreasing unscheduled downtime as upgrading equipment (48%) and widening monitoring capabilities (46 per cent). In a bid to further tackle the issue, planned maintenance has emerged as the number one company strategy in place, deemed the highest priority by 53% of respondents. Emma Botfield, managing director for RS in the UK and Ireland, said: “The challenges facing businesses today mean that maintenance engineers are even more critical to manufacturing success, while under pressure to do more with their existing resources which often include ageing assets. They’re also firefighting because of the geopolitical environment and its effect on supply chains.” The issue of an ageing skilled workforce and a large age gap to the next engineers coming through was highlighted in the report. Meanwhile, Millennials – a group that made up more than half of the respondent pool – are reaching key decision-making positions within organisations. Botfield added: “These Millennials hold a real opportunity to affect change and should work with stakeholders and suppliers to find fresh solutions, and tackle maintenance problems that may be keeping them up at night head-on.” According to data from Engineering UK, people aged between 25 and 34 now constitute the largest single age group in engineering roles. Lydia Amarquaye, Professional Development and Education Policy Advisor at the IMechE, said: “Millennials have grown up with different technologies and they will be trying to implement some of these in their work to make life more efficient for themselves. I think we’re going to see the effects of this shift coming through in the way that businesses are conducted, as it plays into management styles. So, I think it is going to be exciting for the industry as a whole.” It is widely recognised that outsourcing maintenance requirements can help organisations overcome issues like skills shortages. The report found that more than 60% of respondents are outsourcing some form of maintenance requirement, with a gap in skills being the top two reasons. On digital transformation, only 16% of respondents stated they use Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and fewer than one in five respondents said their company is planning a digital transformation in the next 12 months. However, RS believes this is because terms like IIoT and digital transformation aren’t ones operational maintenance people use. Condition monitoring, which uses IIoT, is being employed, according to more than half of the respondents. The top two technologies are vibration measurement – used by 44% of respondents – and current monitoring, used by 43%. The main benefits cited from using these technologies are understanding asset health (68%) and better prediction of failures (53%). Botfield concluded: “This report shows that in the face of a multitude of challenges, maintenance engineers are keeping the wheels of UK industry turning and facing up to these challenges. They should aim to bolster efforts by working with trusted suppliers who understand what they are trying to achieve and where the pain points lie. This will allow them to achieve the best value for money for the organisation.” The RS and IMechE ‘Industry In Motion’ 2023 Maintenance Engineering Report,’ can be downloaded in full at: https://uk.rsonline.com/web/content/m/imeche-report £2 million programme to tackle sustainability challenges in the UK manufacturing industry Digital Catapult and the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult have been awarded £2m from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to accelerate the adoption of digital solutions specifically designed to tackle major sustainability challenges in the UK manufacturing sector. The two Catapults will work alongside industry partners and innovative small businesses to transform the country’s manufacturing sector by using advanced digital technologies to deliver greater resource efficiency and energy efficiency (REEE) as part of the industry’s journey to net zero. Both Catapults are part of the national Catapult Network of leading technology and innovation centres established by Innovate UK, and the project is funded by the Made Smarter Innovation Challenge at Innovate UK. The Made Smarter Innovation Sustainability Accelerator will facilitate sustainable economic growth by expediting adoption of industrial digital technologies (IDT) in manufacturing - a traditionally long and costly process. The programme comes amid growing demand to transition manufacturing towards net zero and help the industry meet the UK Government’s environmental objectives. The manufacturing sector contributes over 11% to UK GVA but 12% of UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the Government’s 2017 Made Smarter Review into industrial digitalisation set out a 4.5% target reduction of CO2 emissions. In the 2021 Net Zero Strategy, a legally binding target of 68% reduction in
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