Welcome to the final MTD magazine issue for 2022. As we turn the page on 2022 and look towards 2023, are you excited and upbeat about the opportunities that 2023 has to offer – or are you a cautious optimist? No, I’m not interested in the pessimists’ perspective, it’s something that is somewhat fuelled by the negative narrative of the mainstream media – was 2022 really that bad?
Ok, so inflation has taken off, there’s the Ukrainian war, global political unrest, our household and business energy bills are rising, our beloved Queen has passed and in the middle of all this – government is an unmitigated disaster. But compared to the pandemic, it’s really not that bad! Covid genuinely was ‘unprecedented’ and we’ve all come out more resilient than ever before. Whilst the tail end of 2021 brought a slim scattering of exhibitions, 2022 brought us MACH, the Farnborough Airshow and more recently IMTS, AMB and the Advanced Engineering show. As Covid is pushed further back in the rearview mirror, the shows are increasingly well attended.
The MTD team has recently been to events at Hexagon (see pages 24 to 26), XYZ, ISCAR, Citizen, AXYZ and FANUC, and countless others are yet to come throughout the remaining weeks of the year. It’s great to see and feel the buzz of events and the confidence of engineers to actually visit events. The IMTS and AMB shows introduced a glut of new innovations that will be present at many of the autumn events and it’s exciting to see our readers out there investigating the opportunities to drive their businesses forward.
In Will Stirling’s end-of-year review, he looks at both the challenges and opportunities of the manufacturing sector and provides some statistics from the MTA’s Geoff Noon. We also have some great features in our regular sections as well as the second of a two-part report on Prima Power. We also have a special ‘Women in Manufacturing’ report where we talk to Philippa Glover from CNC Robotics and Nicole Pellizzon from Autodesk, two inspirational ladies that are trailblazers in the industry. They talk to MTD about everything from James Bond and rockets to role models, mentors and the UK’s industrial strategy.
