Expansion of the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service

Building upon the strong progress the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service (SMAS) has made since it was launched four years ago, Scottish Enterprise has expanded the SMAS workforce with the appointment of 10 highly experienced industry professionals and introduced a number of new services.

Established to provide direct and practical support to help Scotland’s SME manufacturers compete on a world-wide platform, SMAS provides expert advice and one-to-one support, as well as training to help manufacturers improve productivity and generate cost savings.

To double the number of manufacturers SMAS can work with, ten manufacturing experts have been appointed with skills across a wide range of sectors including life-sciences, aeronautical, engineering and food and drink.  Cumulatively, the expanded team now brings with them over 500 years of manufacturing expertise.

Steve Graham, Director of SMAS, explained: "The past four years have proved very successful, helping a wide variety of Scottish manufacturers to become more productive and efficient, all helping to provide increased profits and outputs for them. On average a typical SMAS improvement project delivers in the region of £150,000 of value added productivity improvements. However, we must and can do more and have set ambitious targets. In the past seven months alone, we have delivered 60 per cent growth in year-on-year business support so are well on our way to deliver these targets.

"As well as expanding our in-house team, we have introduced a new brokerage resource, utilising third party specialists and associates across Scotland to work alongside the core SMAS team. This service not only provides increased specialist expertise, but builds in a much greater resource and flexibility to respond to peaks and troughs in customer demand."

Steve Graham continued, "Our aim is to deliver 70 per cent of all improvement projects through our in-house team with the balance delivered by our specialist brokers. Our extended service offer includes providing expertise in lean supply chain management, lean procurement and sourcing of materials, as well as manufacturing leadership and strategy. In the past four years, we have made a value-added-impact of over £41 million to Scottish businesses, helping them to become more efficient, better aligned to meet the needs of their customers and open new markets."

Bob McAlpine, chief operating officer with Aberdeen based Hydrasun explained: "We were first introduced to SMAS by our Scottish Enterprise account manager in early 2007 and are now on our second round of improvement activities.Our operational capacity and capability has improved much faster with the support of SMAS than we could have achieved by ourselves.

www.scottish-enterprise.com/manufacturing