PRV Engineering is pleased to announce that we will be attending Southern Manufacturing & Electronics 2026 in February 2026 at Farnborough International Exhibition Centre.
You can find us at Stand D190, alongside leading UK and international manufacturers, showcasing the breadth of its engineering capabilities and its role in supporting complex, high-value manufacturing projects across multiple sectors.
For many years, engineering lead times were treated as an operational detail. Something to be managed by production schedules, absorbed by buffers, or resolved with overtime when pressure increased.
That assumption no longer holds. Across manufacturing, infrastructure, defence, energy, and transport, engineering lead times are now a strategic risk—one that affects contracts, cash flow, compliance, and long-term competitiveness.
This article explores why lead times have become harder to predict, where risk is actually accumulating, and why organisations that understand this shift are better positioned to deliver reliably.
When projects fall behind, the cause is often assumed to be capacity. Not enough machines. Not enough people. Not enough hours in the day. In reality, many engineering bottlenecks emerge well after machining begins. Components are produced on time and to specification, yet progress slows, deadlines slip, and pressure builds late in the programme.
This article explores the hidden engineering bottlenecks that consistently disrupt delivery, why they are often underestimated, and how addressing them early can significantly improve predictability.
January often feels like a clean slate. Calendars reset, inboxes refill, and teams return with fresh momentum. But in reality, engineering projects rarely restart in January. They continue, carrying forward design decisions, lead times, procurement choices, and unresolved constraints from the previous year.
What does change at the start of the year is decision-making. Suppliers are reviewed. Assumptions are refreshed. Shortlists are quietly adjusted. And those early-year choices can have a disproportionate impact on how engineering projects perform months later.
This article looks at why January decisions matter, where engineering projects typically drift off course, and how early clarity reduces downstream risk without resorting to clichés or over-simplification.
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