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The UK Foresight programme
was launched in 1994 following a major review of Government science,
engineering and technology policy. Foresight is the government's
programme designed to identify future trends, needs, threats
and opportunities and to encourage people and organisations to
meet these future challenges.
This first Foresight exercise
was oriented to identifying sector-based trends within different
industries that might lead to new directions for these sectors.
In 1995 the first set of visions and recommendations for action
were published, followed by four years of development and implementation.
A second round of Foresight
activities was announced in December 1998 and began on 1 April
1999. This continued some of the sector-based work started in
the first round, with 10 broadly based panels, but three new
"thematic" panels were added to tackle the significant
cross-sector issues raised in several sector-based panels at
the during the first round. The three thematic panels cover the
ageing population, crime prevention and manufacturing in 2020.
Manufacturing in the year 2020
was therefore one of the themes for the Foresight initiative,
which aimed to help competitiveness by identifying the key trends.
The Manufacturing 2020 panel of the UK Foresight Programme brought
together in partnership the voices of business, government and
the research base. The objectives were to develop a shared vision
of the opportunities and challenges that could face manufacturing
in the next twenty years and beyond. Its aim was to stimulate
now the action necessary to sustain a strong and globally competitive
UK manufacturing sector in 2020 and beyond.
The panel's work consisted
of two elements: identifying the trends that will influence manufacturing
in the year 2020 and drawing up guidance so that individual companies
could do their own manufacturing foresight exercises to plan
their own strategies.
The result of the Manufacturing
2020 panel's work is available to download
in pdf format from the Manufacturing 2020 web site. |