Best quality means best value added

. The UK has 197 companies in the European top 700, compared with 96 for Germany and 91 for France. Figures for total Value Added are, respectively, £403billion, £310b and £288b, while VA growth is 10%, 7% and 8%. Despite this, performances in the UK engineering sector are mixed. In the UK list of the top 800 companies, aerospace is the 17th largest sector with 2% of all UK Value Added, the automotive sector is 24th largest (with 1.4%) and industrial engineering is 28th (1.2%). Aerospace VA grew by 5% in the past year, automotive shrank 7% and industrial engineering remained steady. BAE Systems was up 4% while Airbus fell 41%. In automotive, Toyota Motor was up 17%, Delphi Diesel Systems rose 15% but Automotive Holdings was down 3%. In steel, Corus was up by 43%. Looking at engineering business performance in European terms, it is evident from the that best results come from having a brand name associated with best quality that allows companies to charge premium prices for their products. Within automotive, for example, Porsche and BMW are far ahead of the rest of the pack in terms of value added per employee. More information, click on the weblink below. It contains a calculator allowing companies smaller than those in the scoreboard to calculate their own value added and benchmark themselves against UK and other European companies in their sector.