sensors & systems - Industrial Technology Magazine

John Richardson’s ENGINEERING DIARY
When my journeying around the UK’s
manufacturing heartlands took me to the
North West recently, I was lucky enough to
spend a very pleasant day in the company of
the chaps from Eriks Sealing Technology. Among other things,
we talked about the history of the region itself, which was one
of the focal points of the industrial revolution in the 1700s. In
particular, we could argue that it was in and around Manchester
where we really learned how to take raw materials and, on an
industrial scale, turn them into an end product. And in the
region, that product was cotton. So successful was Manchester’s
cotton industry that by around 1850, it was supplying two
thirds of the world’s spun cotton.
In the early days, the merchants who brought the cotton from
Liverpool sold it to small-time masters in Manchester, who then
passed it to the spinners working in the cottages. But the 1770s
saw the invention of spinning machines from the likes of Samuel
Crompton and James Hargreaves, which completely changed the
way cotton goods were produced, and were instrumental in the
shift to true industrialisation. The machines in the first textile
factories – Manchester’s spinning mills – were driven by waterpower,
so the mills grew up alongside rivers. Then, in 1783,
long before the world saw the steam train, inventor Richard
Arkwright realised the potential of James Watt’s Rotary Steam
Engine as a source of power, and began using the machine in
his Cromford factory. Others followed his lead, meaning that
factories no longer had to be built close to fast-flowing rivers;
instead they could be built wherever there were good supplies of
coal and cheap labour.
Manchester and Marxism
And so it was that the slums of Manchester grew up, housing
workers in the most appalling conditions, who themselves were
treated as little better that products, to be hired when needed
and simply discarded during slow periods. Perhaps it should
come as no surprise to find the region also spawned the origins
of communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were regular
visitors to Manchester, where Engels family had cotton spinning
interests. In 1844 Marx wrote: “The worker becomes all the
poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production
increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever
cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the
increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct
proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labour
produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker
as a commodity – and does so in the proportion in which it
produces commodities generally.” In 1847, Marx and Engels
collaborated to write ‘The Communist Manifesto’. Scarcely was it
published when a wave of revolutions broke out in Europe.
Perhaps it is interesting to draw links between industrialisation
and communism, and to look at where things are going in China
at the moment. Certainly there are parallels. But if the North
West can indeed be seen as a mirror for where China might
head, what has happened to Manchester’s indigenous
manufacturing in the last couple of hundred years? Surely it has
been decimated.
Well, we come back to Eriks Sealing Technologies. It can
trace its origins back to 1958, when Charles Weston started
manufacturing seals near Salford. By the 1970s, Charles
Weston was a global brand, and when JH Fenner bought the
company in 1976, and merged it with the Pioneer Oil Sealing
Company to form Pioneer Weston, it formed a company that
employed over 600 people across three manufacturing sites.
Through the 1980s, JH Fenner invested in developing global
manufacturing, so successfully that the company became an
attractive acquisition for Wyko, which itself was then acquired
by Eriks Group in 2006. And so, earlier this year, Pioneer
Weston became the UK arm of Eriks Sealing Technology.
In terms of its manufacturing output, one might consider
Pioneer Weston as a shadow of its former self. The uninformed
spectator might view the humble seal as a low value product
that cannot possibly be manufactured in the UK competitively.
But what I find particularly interesting is the way the company
views modern manufacturing in the UK, because it mirrors a
growing realisation that our definitions of manufacturing need to
change. It is no longer all about how many products are shipped
through the doors – you can leave those definitions for China,
India and others. Instead, successful manufacturing in the UK is
all about focusing on the entire manufacturing process, from
market assessment and product design through to manufacture,
support and service delivery. In that light, a manufacturer can
think about its operations on a global basis, with design in one
country, contract manufacture in another, assembly in a third,
and possibly the back-up spread world-wide. When I look at the
way Eriks is investing in design and testing facilities at the
Pioneer Weston Technology Centre, then I can see all of this in
action, and I can see that the UK can indeed be a successful
manufacturing player in the 21st Century.
If our definitions of manufacturing in the UK do need to
change, then perhaps the pages of this very magazine need to
change also, to reflect the needs of today’s market. I’d be very
interested to hear your views on the subject.
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May 2008 • INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY
57