Manufacturing jobs may once have been about sitting on an assembly line doing a repetitive action, but the reality today is very different. With the automated processes, staff need to have flexibility to their skills and can find themselves working in a variety of roles. Wages have also been shown to compare favourably with the banking, retail and creative industries.

From internships and apprenticeship to graduate recruitment schemes, there are multiple entry levels into manufacturing. They are not just direct production jobs, but marketing, procurement, supply-chain management, logistics, design, research and development. Moving between the different roles will lead to a challenging and rewarding career path.

Images of chimneys bellowing out smoke with large and cumbersome machinery on a factory floor are as dated as mobile phones the size of briefcases. Modern day manufacturing uses hi-tech facilities encompassing the pharmaceutical, biotech and agrochemical disciplines. Highly-skilled experts, visionary managers and employees in everything from designers to accountants means manufacturing needs academic minds as much as any modern industry.

You won’t find any celebrity manufacturing experts gracing the covers of magazines or invited to glitzy awards ceremonies, but the UK’s contribution is celebrated throughout the world with six Formula One teams based here. You can’t manufacture anything without designing it first! Finding solutions to design problems requires creative thinking, as does developing marketing to sell them.

Although the UK may not be able to compete with many countries in terms of the manufacturing process, where else would you find the highly skilled designers and development teams? Assembly line work is often moved elsewhere so it can be carried out cheaply, but the UK retains the conceptual processes.