You’re presenting the keynote at this year’s
Engineer Conference, please tell us a little more about this.
My intention is to offer some insight into the benefits of industrial digitalisation, to look beyond the hype to the company, employee and economic benefits of embracing digital technology and to explore some practical examples in Edge Computing, AI and Cloud Technology to name a few.
How do digitalisation, digital twinning, industry 4.0, etc, have the potential to improve the productivity and efficiency of UK manufacturing?
Industry 4.0 (the digitalisation of industry) represents the world’s next industrial productivity leap and again it’s derived from technological progress. This time, it’s all about data and the unprecedented networking of humans and machines. It will continue what we’ve started, with tools that augment both human physical and intellectual effort augmenting current levels of automation in industry.
Digital twins are already much more than geometry-based CAD models - they help us rapidly design, prototype and deploy both products and production plants in the virtual world helping to avoid much of the cost associated with traditional new product introduction or plant investment (without the downtime) – but also, digital twinning enables a faster time to market which in turn means competitiveness. Much of the value of the digital twin is yet to be widely realised – namely the digital twin of the performance of machines, plants and supply chains. This is where the IOT connectivity that we increasingly expect, enabled by MindSphere and Industrial Edge, connects a wealth of industrial data to increasingly advanced applications that help improve our insight to performance and enable us to act on it. This could mean a predictive failure intervention or use data to improve a product design or the enablement of a completely new business model.
Industry 4.0 is a global race – it’s about building unprecedented agility into what we do - it offers significant opportunities if we embrace it and the threat we’ll fall behind if we don’t.
Sum up the Made Smarter vision in one sentence?
Made Smarter is all about the UK embracing the fourth industrial revolution so we can dramatically improve our manufacturing productivity, growth and high value jobs footprint – all of which sets us up for a leading role in the future of manufacturing.
How far along the road are we to achieving this vision?
We’ve made a good start and there are pockets of excellence, although we must catch up given how little we automate in comparison with other industrialised nations today.
We’re becoming more joined up as industry, government and the innovation community and we’re starting to realise the benefits, at the same time as starting to help take the long tail of smaller manufacturers with us through the Made Smarter north west pilot. The North West was chosen because it represents much of our manufacturing and industrial activity and the institutional stakeholders there were willing participants when it came to collaboration and the support required to set up and scale such an innovative intervention.
What are you most looking forward to at The Engineer Conference and Expo
this summer?
I am looking forward to spending time in detailed debate with my peers; with those in the industry who are trying to unpick and solve productivity problems through technology. This is a leading-edge discussion for engineering and one of our major challenges for the 2020s.
The Engineer Conference takes place 4-5 June at NEC, Birmingham, and is co-located with Advanced Manufacturing, The Engineer Expo and Subcon. Register now for a free visitor pass HERE.
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