Steve Spall, Operations Director of Innocent Drinks talks to Linda Fairbrother about the growth of the popular beverage brand over the last decade. describes the changes in the manufacturing & operations arrangements that allowed Innocent to grow from a tiny business in West London to Europe's No1 Smoothie company, as well as plans for future growth.

A look at the challenges Jonathan Duck faced when joining a problematic management buyout, restarting growth so that the private equity investors (including the management team) made a good return, and then leading Amtico into a highly geared secondary management buyout, just ahead of the credit crunch. He will describe how Amtico has been able to post record results in the middle of the current recession, and how the company has made its West Midlands factory cost competitive with China. This has let Amtico repatriate manufacturing from the Far East to its UK and US factories, and play its own part in rebuilding the UK’s manufacturing base. Jonathan has run a range of businesses over the past 20 years and will summarise some of the lessons learnt, particularly in private equity deals where value has to be created quickly and with finite resources.

It’s the UK’s biggest manufacturing sector - employing 440,000 people across the country, generating turnover of some £73bn and exporting £10bn a year. But the food and drink industry is facing many challenges – such as climate change impacts, increasing volatility in raw materials prices and a poor skills base. A unique collaborative project between IfM and the Food and Drink Federation has indentified some of the ways in which the industry needs to adapt to prosper in the future – as well as the changes that must be made to the UK policy landscape.

'In the Greater Cambridge area, there is a dearth of risk capital (particularly venture funding) required by the innovative, growth potential firms on which the cluster has relied for 30-40 years. To a limited extent, demand has been met by imaginative new schemes provided by the public sector, at both a national and a regional level. However, it is unrealistic to expect the public sector alone to meet the gap. The ‘funding escalator’ is a continuum – from family investors and grants at the outset right through to trade sales and IPOs – and prolonged congestion or gaps at any stage will ultimately affect the health of the entire system. Particularly given the fragile state of public finances, for the foreseeable future businesses need to access and use funds with enhanced professionalism rather than expect the supply of finance to revert to pre-2008 conditions

'Open innovation' describes the ways in which companies can create value through innovating in partnership with other organisations. The topic is attracting high levels of interest from policymakers, consultants, multinational corporations and academics. It is being hailed as the 'new way' to improve companies' abilities to innovate, accelerate regional economic recovery, attract investment and link with the science base. But is it really anything new? Is there any evidence that it really works? What does it mean for start-ups, medium-sized firms and multinationals in and around Cambridge? This talk will cover the background, current practice, and implications for future of the Cambridge high tech cluster of the emerging (or perhaps very old) phenomenon of 'open innovation'.

Clean technology industries are emerging and attracting significant attention from policy-makers, entrepreneurs and investors. Dr. Gregory Theyel, Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Manufacturing, discusses the location and firm strategy decisions of companies in the wind turbine, solar cell, and air and water purification industries. Questions about where these industries are emerging and why firms are choosing these locations are important for industrial policy, economic development and investment. Dr Theyel addresses these questions by locating firms in clean technology industries in the United States and explaining why these firms are in these locations based on demand, government mechanisms, regional resources and industrial organization.

Traditionally manufacturing research has tended to focus on individual elements of the industrial value chain such as production technology or operations research. Professor Mike Gregory, Head of Cambridge University Institute for Manufacturing, argues that the modern integrated definition of manufacturing, which includes the whole value chain from marketing to service, requires a more integrated approach to research. Thinking about innovation and manufacturing in the broader sense can reveal the potential of manufacturing to enhance economic performance. Finally Professor Gregory demonstrate the importance of understanding the dynamics of emerging industries so that the UK's strengths in innovation can be more rapidly and fully exploited.

Professor Robèrt, is the founder of the internationally renowned NGO The Natural Step. Originally a cancer scientist, he decided 20 years ago to launch a movement in Sweden for sustainability. His group worked closely with other scientists, business, and public sector bodies worldwide to develop a unifying framework for sustainable development and help in its implementation. In 2000 he was awarded the Blue Planet Prize, a prestigious award in recognition of his work. He will talk about his journey, the framework for sustainable development, and how it has been implemented in industries all over the world.

Waste is produced whenever more power, water or materials are used than is absolutely necessary. In this presentation, Dr Claire Barlow will take a broad definition of waste in manufacturing industry to include anything that does not directly contribute to making the desired product. Not only does waste fail to add any value – it actually costs money in terms of the materials, energy and water used to produce it, and the landfill charges to dispose of it. It follows that any steps taken to reduce waste should be financially beneficial for an enterprise. Many waste reduction measures are no more than common sense and may involve little or no expenditure. This presentation will look at examples from large and small companies engaged in a range of operations: What are the barriers to starting, and then rolling out, a waste reduction programme? Lack of time or expertise? Scepticism within the company? More far-reaching measures may require substantial capital outlay; decisions about their merits may involve calculating pay-back periods, or may depend other influences such as establishing 'green credentials'. Examples of these will be discussed.

Businesses have long recognized the importance of an effective supply chain, one that integrates suppliers, enables efficient production and is able to service customers in a timely cost effective manner. The design of the supply network, linking suppliers, producers, distributors with their customers has evolved over the last 25 years from a basic process integration activity, to one of a complex network design task. Globalization, new routes to market and rapid technology change have resulted in changing industry structures, often involving a fragmentation of the traditional supply chain. In his talk, Dr Jag Srai reviews some of the exemplar models identified in our recent research projects within the Centre for International Manufacturing, and how the 'configuration perspective' applied across different aspects of the manufacturing value chain can support firms to design radical alternatives to innovation and market supply.

The technology roadmapping approach was originally developed by Motorola more than 30 years ago, as a means for aligning technology programmes with product developments. Since then the method has been adopted widely, at firm and sector levels, adapted to address a range of strategic challenges. This presentation will provide an overview of history and application of the roadmapping approach, including examples. 'Fast-start' workshop approaches will be described, which emphasise cross-functional strategic dialogue, decision making and action, providing a light-touch iterative approach for developing strategy.