For one industry 2012 was far from a year of doom and gloom. The UK posted the largest year-on-year increase in car sales, hitting 2m vehicles sold, by far the highest rate for more than a decade. Sales of UK-built cars rose 11% in 2012, while the remaining UK-manufactured vehicles (eight out of 10) are exported.
Automotive is again one of the UK’s manufacturing success stories, home to seven volume car manufacturers, seven commercial vehicle manufacturers, 10 bus and coach manufacturers, eight major premium and sports car producers, and over 100 specialist brands. Not forgetting eight Formula One teams, of which current World Champion Red Bull Racing is headquartered, like ReadSoft UK, here in Milton Keynes.
Aside from Germany, the UK has the strongest premium brands in terms of global market share, producing more than one million vehicles and two million engines each year. The key to this success has been product, with every new vehicle to emerge proving that cars designed and built in Britain can be every bit as prestigious as their international rivals. Strong consumer demand and interest in fuel-efficient cars is driving further interest, and the nascent alternative fuel/electric car market is starting to mature. All of which means automotive manufacturing levels are set grow to pre-recession levels by 2014.
Critical to this ongoing growth is the supply chain. At present, almost 80% of all component types required for vehicle assembly operations can be procured from UK suppliers, an industry which alone generates an additional £4.5 – £5bn of value annually.
In this industry we therefore see considerable opportunities to maximise business effectiveness through the application of back office process automation. Around 2,350 UK companies regard themselves as ‘automotive’ suppliers, employing around 82,000 people, which generate a tremendous amount of paperwork, and not just terms of Accounts Payable (AP). Automotive manufacturing could apply automation to delivery notes, sales orders, forms, AP, AR, their internal legal, HR and SharePoint systems to greatly improve day to day operational efficiencies.
Multiple business area automation is a great way to keep things running smoothly, and what is clear is there remains great potential to further improve the industry landscape. Despite the strong New Year figures from the automotive industry, it could have been better still if we consider the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, which shows the output per hour of private-sector workers fell by almost 4% in 2012.
To bring automation to all automotive IT might sound like a big ask, but generic application templates can rapidly bring most processes quickly into an automated workflow, quickly reducing the long term workload. If systems are working on a ‘straight through processing’ basis and are joined up – using a platform such as ReadSoft XBOUND – then the management information system (MIS), finance and operations will be better equipped to meet their SLAs.
By removing the need to manually process or handle issues, manufacturers and their suppliers find they have room to breathe, are better positioned to plan forward and add real value to the business, and find new ways to gain more marketshare, such as expanding production plants here in the UK, and investing in expansion, especially in China and India, where there is the potential to double global production by 2020. Bringing better efficiency into automotive manufacturing, an industry that is estimated to support 7.5 jobs elsewhere in the economy for every job in UK vehicle assembly can only be good news for the UK’s wider economy.
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