NEWS & EVENTS
A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES
SIEMENS
‘International Women in Engineering Day’:
Siemens at forefront of recruiting women into manufacturing
Sarah Black-Smith from the Siemens
Congleton factory says engineering has
opened a world of opportunities for women
Manufacturing has been a male bastion for
centuries. Over the years this has changed
and although there is still a long way to
go women are now represented in many
manufacturing disciplines.
Siemens is constantly striving to build
an innovative and diverse culture. With a
78 per cent male employee base in the
UK there is still an urgent need to attract
women to the company and to engineering
and manufacturing in general.
Brian Holliday, Managing Director Siemens
Digital Industries, said: “The digital
revolution in industry is an opportunity
to build better balance. Although figures
are improving, the UK still languishes
amongst the lowest when it comes to
the percentage of female engineering
professionals in Europe1, yet our industry
needs more than ever, the talent, skills and
experience of women to create competitive
advantage.”
As the world marks the ‘International
Women in Engineering Day’ on June
23, Siemens is working hard to ensure
that more women join the manufacturing
sector. The company has taken concrete
steps to proactively make its job adverts
more gender neutral, supported them with
videos giving applicants an insight into
the workplace, to bust a few myths about
the manufacturing environment. Siemens
hired 40 per cent female graduates in
2019, compared to 29 per cent in 2018.
In January 2020 from a total of 555
apprentices across all Siemens businesses
in the UK, 96 were female, around 17 per
cent, a slight reduction from previous years
but a realistic indicator for the 2020/21
academic year.
It is trailblazers like Sarah Black-Smith who
help demonstrate that women are equally
capable of leading in the manufacturing
profession. She is now the Head of factory
operations at Siemens’ award-winning
factory in Congleton which produces one
million drives and controls per year and
employs 300 people using the latest digital
tools and automation.
Graduating from Loughborough University
in 2004 with a BEng in Manufacturing
Engineering and Management, Sarah went
on to complete a Masters in Operations
Excellence and worked on her placement
year for Alstom in Lincoln.
“It was quite lucky really that six months into
my placement at Alstom, the site was sold
to Siemens in 2003. I was then sponsored
through my final year and taken on by
Siemens as a graduate. I joined at the age
of 22 as a Lean Implementer.”
The role was within Assembly and Test,
meaning that once the gas turbines were
assembled, they were put into the test bays
and run up to speed. Core to this early role
was identifying process improvements and
trying to save costs, but most importantly,
working with diverse sets of factory teams.
“I moved through the ranks quite quickly,
going from Cell Manager to Manufacturing
Manager looking after teams of 30 people
on the shop floor. I was quite young, but
it gave me a great footing in a factory
environment. After a few years in Lincoln,
a Production Manager role came up at our
site in Congleton. I jumped at the chance,
my husband and I had already decided we
were ready to move back to the North West
to be closer to family.
“I was promoted to the role of Head of
Factory Operations, which is what I’m doing
now. I am responsible for all of production,
the engineering teams including
maintenance test engineering, product and
process engineering, and I lead the Lean
Operations.”
64 PECM Issue 45