A&M Director Melvin Wingfield joins panel for manufacturing campaign event.
Leading industry experts for manufacturing ‘Making the Future’ campaign update
(extracted from Express & Star website)
A&M director Melvin Wingfield participated in a panel of industry experts marking the first anniversary of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce "manufacturing the future” campaign on Wednesday 24th October at Molineux.
Chaired by Corin Crane, chief executive of Black Country Chamber of Commerce, the panel event finished with a Q & A encouraging audience engagement.
The panel members were:
Adam Titchen – membership development manager at manufacturers' organisation EEF, responsible for managing and developing relationships with member companies across the West Midlands, assisting with business growth and utilising services and support available.
Alex de Ruyter – director of the Centre for Brexit Studies – brings a wealth of research experience and academic engagement in the area of regional economic development and labour market issues.
Jo Smith – managing director of Fortress Interlocks, based at their head office in Wolverhampton; the company have just been awarded their third Queen’s Award for exports.
Neill Smith – head of SME engine business development at the Manufacturing Technology Centre. Neil’s role at the MTC is to manage the SME business development team nationally with the aim to engage with SMEs in using the MTC to support and improve their productivity and develop and implement innovation and technology.
Charlotte Clode – litigation partner at FBC Manby Bowdler – handles the firm's intellectual property litigation at partner level and manages a portfolio of IT, software and development companies.
A&M Director Melvin Wingfield has supported the growth of Smethwick based A&M since the company was set up in 2002 by Mark Wingfield and Arthur Watts. Melvin now works full time running A&M’s finance and administration to support a £5m turnover SME. Up to 2014 he combined this with a role as senior research fellow in local governance at De Montfort University, Leicester.
A&M has delivered sustained sales and jobs growth over the past five years through a strategy of continuing investment in facilities, equipment, people and skills. The combination of EDM spark and wire erosion, CNC machining and design engineering has enabled A&M to manufacture precision components, prototypes, production runs and tooling. A&M’S customers are in the aerospace, automotive, Formula 1, general engineering and production assembly sectors.
Corin Crane, chief executive of the Black Country of Commerce said: "The Chamber are incredibly proud to line up such an esteemed panel of industry experts from our region. As a membership organisation, it is crucial that we are in continued dialogue with our members on a range of policy issues. Our manufacturing policy campaign is totally member-led, so the direction of travel for the next six to 12 months will be dictated by our manufacturers.
"We’ve seen some fantastic work completed and more of our manufacturers will want to engage with the campaign. We know that the policy landscape changes frequently at local, regional and national levels and we need to be flexible in our approach to the campaign aims we wish to pursue.”
