NEW MINI
Gordon Brown heralds a British manufacturing triumph.
On September 13th 2006, the launch ceremony of the New Mini Mark 2 was heralded by a great gathering of the powerful and mighty. The valedictory speech was made by Gordon Brown, UK finance minister. In his speech, he lauded himself, for creating macro-economic stability in the UK, German company BMW, which had the vision and courage to invest in the marque and create the advanced manufacturing facility, and the British designers, managers and workers who have styled and made it. Mr Brown cited the Mini as an example of how the UK could succeed at the cutting edge of global manufacturing and promised government support for R&D, apprenticeships to create skilled workers, credits for capital investment and a range of other government measures to stimulate investment and skills.
All of the above represents unalloyed good news - and Mr Brown also made reference to other successful mainstays of the UK automotive industry, such as Nissan and Honda. These companies' plants in Britain are world class and turn out cars of high quality with an efficiency that easily overcomes the UK high cost base problems.
What Gordon Brown didn't say.
It would have been quite inappropriate to mention at such a genuinely positive event that there is really no connection between the Old Mini and BMW's new creation, which is a totally different, but cleverly captures the charisma of the 1960's icon.
What is totally tragic is the fact that the British management of Morris, Austin, British Motor Corporation, British Leyland, Rover and all the other owners of the Mini brand let the Old Mini go on without any investment or development for over 40 years, whereas the Germans of BMW are reinvesting in a new model after only five years. This is an example of the incompetence, neglect and ineffectiveness that has typified large swathes the UK manufacturing industry for many decades.
Gordon Brown also failed to mention that despite UK-based foreign companies' efforts the overall export performance of UK manufacturing industries is a rolling disaster, that the levels of R&D, investment in capital equipment, training and productivity of British-owned manufacturing companies in the UK generally trails miserably behind those of BMW, Honda, Nissan and many other American, Japanese, Korean and German companies operating in Britain.
So the Mini story should be celebrated with a full heart - it is a genuinely good news story and shows again what British design, engineering and manufacturing staff can do when well led and supported by training and proper investment.
The spectres at the feast are British top management (not all, but far, far too many) and the UK investment industry, which is systemically adverse to long-term investment in pretty well anything that has the least element of risk attached to it. The old, old story of Lions led by Donkeys continues unabated.
Mr Brown is not going to solve the problems of ignorance, indifference and incompetence deeply embedded in UK manufacturing and investment by fiddling around the edges with incentives - a deep-seated problem of this magnitude needs much more radical solutions. Perhaps for a start it would help if our political leaders had the courage to speak the truth about the seat of the problems - which would mean taking the trouble to understand them in the first place. Thereafter there is a need for much more direct intervention to help create centres of excellence and extensive investment in innovation, plant, training and development (which should be compulsory for managers). Perhaps it would be best to follow the Nissan example and start apprenticeships for managers which would be enacted alongside their staff rather in Business Schools.
The money for such strategies will be freely available when central government stops spending billions on useless consulting and incompetently commissioning vast and wasteful IT projects. Of course, this raises another question - change in UK manufacturing will not only need money, but skilful leadership and long-term strategies. Perhaps we should hand it all over to the Japanese and Germans to manage for us.
