Automate UK has appointed Dan Thombs as chief executive officer, giving the trade association new leadership as UK manufacturers reassess automation investment, productivity, and technical skills.
Thombs succeeds Peter Williamson, who has moved into the role of policy director after completing his term as chief executive. The change gives the association a new operational lead while retaining Williamson’s policy experience at a time when automation is increasingly linked to industrial strategy, capital investment, and workforce planning.
Automate UK represents companies across robotics, machine vision, motion control, industrial automation, and related technologies. Its members sit across the supplier, integrator, and technology base that manufacturers rely on when they automate production, handling, inspection, and packaging tasks.
The appointment comes as automation adoption remains uneven across the UK. Large automotive, aerospace, food, pharmaceutical, and logistics operations often have clearer investment cases and deeper engineering teams, while smaller manufacturers can face higher relative risk, limited internal controls expertise, and uncertainty over payback. A poorly specified project can become expensive quickly, particularly when process variation, safety, data, and maintenance needs are not understood at the start.
Trade bodies can help reduce that uncertainty by improving access to technical knowledge, credible partners, and practical adoption routes. The challenge is to present automation as an engineering discipline rather than a broad productivity promise. Good projects start with process understanding, stable inputs, clear measures of success, workforce engagement, and a maintainable system design.
UK automation activity has been broadening beyond fixed robot cells and high-volume lines. Companies are looking at collaborative robots, mobile robots, adaptive gripping, machine vision, flexible feeding, AI-assisted quality inspection, and digital work instructions. Those technologies can help automate more variable work, but they also demand careful integration with safety systems, production routines, and operator roles.
Factory trial environments are becoming more valuable in that setting. The Manufacturing Technology Centre’s Robot Experience Centre gives companies a way to test robotics applications before committing to full deployment, reducing the risk of buying equipment that cannot handle the real process. That approach mirrors the support many smaller manufacturers need: less sales theatre, more evidence under realistic conditions.
Automate UK Week 2027 at the NEC will give the association a major platform to bring suppliers and users together. Its success will depend on whether it can make automation feel practical for companies that have not yet built extensive internal capability. Demonstrations need to show not only what a system can do, but how it is specified, installed, guarded, maintained, programmed, and justified commercially.
Policy will remain part of the association’s work. Capital allowances, training support, investment incentives, standards, and regional manufacturing programmes all influence adoption. UK productivity has lagged across many sectors, and automation is frequently cited as part of the answer, but investment decisions are made at plant level. National ambition has to translate into confident purchasing, capable suppliers, and technicians who can keep systems running.
Thombs takes over as manufacturers face labour shortages, energy cost pressure, quality demands, and rising competition from more automated economies. Automation will not remove every constraint, and it will not suit every process, but well-designed systems can improve consistency, safety, throughput, and resilience. Automate UK’s task is to help more companies reach that point without treating technology adoption as an act of faith.
