1.  INTRODUCTION

  The Birmingham Centre for Manufacturing (BCM) is a partnership organisation owned by the Birmingham City Council, Birmingham and Solihull Training and Enterprise Council and University of Central England. The BCM has been in operation for 14 years and in that time has dealt with over 1,500 Small and Medium enterprises. The mission of the BCM is to give specialist support and assist manufacturing companies and people within the West Midlands to achieve "World Class" standards, and to encourage economic growth through manufacturing. The BCM provides training at all levels in manufacturing techniques, from unemployed people through to senior managers and provides consultancy for companies to enable them to develop both their strategic aims and their day to day running and use of modern techniques. Each year the BCM will deal with up to 500 SMEs in the West Midlands and will support them in a number of different initiatives.

2.  THE NEEDS OF THE SME

  Most SMEs are not good at accessing any government of European funding and tend not to have the expertise to understand the bureaucracy that goes with it. They would say that they have no time in which to work with initiatives and much of the funding available is very difficult to "sell" to the SME, as what they really require is often slightly different from the prescriptive way the funding is accessed.

  The BCM has found over the years that whilst there are a small number of companies that wish to grow and improve there are still a large number of SMEs that do not realise the pressures that will come upon them and seem very content in their present situation. These companies are often in a niche environment and have quite loyal customers, and often a small customer base of perhaps one or two customers making up 85 per cent of their total turnover.

  What the SMEs first require is inspiration, and if innovation is to become the key they need to be then inspired to innovate both their processes as well as their products. Much of the research done at the BCM has shown that many of the companies that do grow, grow through opportunity and not innovation in new products. This requires a different form of innovation and a different set of skills in order to drive the company forward. Without the inspiration to do this the companies will not find the will to succeed.

  SMEs also require a "fire break" to enable them to do something, and even those willing to take risks will not be able to unless techniques or funding can be found to give them an opportunity to move to the next stage. As SMEs grow they become busy and the risk involved in innovating or going to the next stage of growth is quite considerable, so many companies stop at this stage. The SMEs also require local centres of excellence, which have real creditability in both their techniques and the local community. The way SMEs use innovation and grow is through winning the hearts and minds not just of the key managers but also of the workforce itself, and companies enabling their workforce to be empowered to use their ideas and skills to grow the business.

  In terms of funding this requires a flexibility and fast access that often the bureaucracy legislates against. There is also a move recently to more output based funding and whilst this will help companies to grow the skills of their people, it will not help them innovate and grow the company. Those successful companies that the BCM have worked with (and there will be nearly a 100 of these) will be doing different things across the whole company and require a more flexible and less prescriptive regime to help drive that forward.

  Another area that has become very common in the companies that BCM work with is the need for real ownership and drive, and inspired leaders who will actually take the company forward. Through networks and benchmarking, and visits to other countries to see how SMEs grow there, the BCM has enabled many companies to see role models that suit their environment. The use of very large companies and of typically Japanese automotive manufacturers as role models have never really worked, although obviously the techniques they used have. However, the use of SMEs in other countries who face similar problems but have found unique and innovative ways around those problems is often enough to inspire the leaders of SMEs to take their company forward.

  The final part of innovation as we see it is developing team business skills (eg Marketing, Computer Systems, Continuous Improvement etc) and beginning to work with their own suppliers and their customers in partnership. Much of the present climate does not expose senior managers to these business skills and there is a growing need for people at all levels to understand the impact their decisions have right across the business. This will also include developing the business skills of the shop floor as well as their technical skills and under the banner of Investors in People or NVQ qualification, the drive to educate and train the workforce is going well.

3.  CONCLUSION

  The BCM has considerable experience in working with SMEs, and with enabling them and supporting them in their growth and innovation. We believe we are the largest centre of excellence in the UK and that we have worked with more SMEs than any other centre of excellence in the UK. The difficulty is always the start of getting companies to be innovative and drive up the skill levels of all their people.

  In the end it is very rarely funding that drives this; however, it needs to be available to support the drive. What is required is a systematic approach through networking and through company visits to inspire SMEs to do new things. Once inspired they need tremendous resource and support in order to enable them to grow. We at the BCM concentrate on the quality of companies and not quantity, and much of the funding available has targets which have to do with quantity and not with quality. Growing a small number of SMEs considerably will have far more impact than just slightly working with a great number of SMEs (where the grass will quickly grow over those areas that have been improved). In conclusion the BCM believes it is important to deal with companies holistically and much of the present aim of innovation seems to be in very specific areas. Companies that grow effectively tend to find their innovation through a number of different areas and need a much broader creditable and flexible approach.

27 April 1998