they faces challenges not so easily addressed by policy interventions – for example succession planning, improving the efficiency of use of material and financial resources thus alleviating challenges related to access to capital and modernising work processes, but in particular management practices which might often be a major challenge for SMEs. To support these tasks SPETA advocate for more broad-based used of larger number of productivity and profitability indicators, i.e. beyond labour productivity also looking into land/space productivity, productive assets productivity, cash productivity and productivity of knowledge creation and accumulation activities (include reporting). Business associations like SPETA, can assist government agencies and other involved actors using their networks to address the long list of other challenges often faced by business and SMEs, including making sense of multiplicity of public and private support and advice services, aligning the needs of business to those of other actors, providing continued support for companies instead of oneoff solutions and ensuring broad-based reach-out and engagement of large number of private sector actors.
4.4. PE Industry in the European Union Given that precision engineering industry, as defined in Singapore, includes a list of sectors and subsectors belonging to different manufacturing activities, it is not straightforward to compare the sector as it is defined in Singapore to a similar sector in other countries. Furthermore, even if an ideal reconstruction of the sector would be possible, further complexities are involved, including (slightly) different industrial classification systems in each country/region, differences in data collection instruments, different definition of concepts as well as statistical practices like accounting for price changes across countries. When comparing the Singapore Standard Industrial Classification (SSIC) with International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) and then with Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (NACE) for Precision Engineering industry, a limited number of differences emerges, particularly notable as regards the treatment of repair activities for different manufactured goods – whereas in the EU such activities have singled out categories, in Singapore such activities are included together with the production activities of those specific products. This difference might be substantial, as the repair sector in the EU is quite significant. The other differences are minor, including the treatment of natural rubber processing, uncertain treatment of machining which is part of treatment and coating of metals sector in ISIC and NACE but is not mentioned in SSIC as well as not fully clear attribution of the manufacturing of lifting and handling equipment sector – presumably the sector most linked to automation through robotics technologies. Finally, the attribution of installation of industrial machinery and equipment economic activity is also uncertain. When analysing European Precision Engineering industry, several sub-sectors stand out in terms of their size (turnover), the largest being manufacture of plastic products (235 billion EUR turnover in 2015), manufacture of general-purpose machinery (216 billion EUR turnover in 2015). In terms of employment, the leading sector again is manufacture of plastics products (1.3 million employees in 2015), closely followed by treatment and coating of metals/machining sector (1.1. million employees in 2015). In terms of productivity (value added per employee) three sectors standing out are the Test&Measurement sector (with 79.000 EUR VA per employee), Laser& Optics sector (with 78.000 EUR VA per employee) and Plastic and Rubber machinery sector (with 78.000 EUR VA per employee).
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