PECM Issue 45 2020 | Page 64

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