Extract from IDS Executive Compensation Review 310

Production managers and senior engineers

British manufacturing may be in decline, but it still employs around a tenth of the UK workforce and is responsible for just under a fifth of total output. Among the sector’s key employees are production managers in charge of day-to-day manufacturing and senior engineers. To provide an insight into their reward arrangements, we draw on IDS’ annual pay and conditions in engineering publication for our third consecutive round-up of the salary levels of these important managers and professionals.

Compared to production managers, those working in the engineering industry with ‘operations’ in the job title seem to command a slight pay premium if the findings of our latest survey are any guide. According to our results, based on returns from 61 engineering employers, at the midpoint, operations managers were paid some £2,479 or 5.9 per cent more on average than their production management counterparts. All the figures for our latest production management survey are taken from IDS’ separately published report, Pay and conditions in engineering 2005/06 and this article reproduces detailed aggregate remuneration tables for operations managers, production managers and ‘other’ managers.