Made Smarter - Innovation Network: Design for Manufacture

Our series of Made Smarter | Innovation Network webinars – delivered as part of the ISCF Manufacturing Made Smarter programme –  showcases the journeys of manufacturers innovating with digital technologies to improve the performance of their business, alongside digital technology providers creating innovative solutions to aid the manufacturers journey.

You can register for one or more of the webinars based on your specific areas of interest.

Manufacturing Made Smarter (MMS) is one of the Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programmes, investing £147m into creating a fully connected, dynamic manufacturing ecosystem inspiring innovation across academia, technology providers and manufacturers.

For start-up firms bringing a new manufactured product to market, the importance of design to manufacture cannot be under-estimated. Compared to start-ups, established firms don’t have to navigate the same number of hurdles but good design for manufacture remains absolutely essential.

This session will explore how Digital Technologies can improve Design for Manufacture decision making. We’ll look at the types of decisions that need to be made, the implications of poor decision making, and the range of technologies that can support Design for Manufacture.

Who should attend?

If you are a manufacturer aspiring to be more productive, efficient, competitive, resilient through the use of digital technologies, an integrator or a digital technology solution provider or developer who wants to reach a manufacturing audience, then this event series will be of interest to you.

Digital technology solution providers and developers engaged in the series will have early access to express their interest in taking a stand at Innovation Alley, within The Manufacturers inaugural exhibition Smart Factory Expo at Digital Manufacturing Week.

• 10:00 | Introduction and Welcome – KTN
• 10:10 | The UK Manufacturing Supporter – WE’RE SUPPORTING IT – NMIS

Hannah Leslie is a Business Development Executive in the Design Engineering Team at the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS), one of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres in the UK. They bring industry, academia and the public sector together in one place with the aim of transforming UK manufacturing. Hannah will talk about digital technologies can be utilised to improve the design process and present a few case studies on the topic.

• 10:20 | The Manufacturer – WE DID IT! – Unipart Manufacturing Group

Hosein Torabmostaedi is a Digital and Innovation Manager at Unipart Manufacturing Group (UMG), a global specialist in manufacturing and supply chain. They wanted to create an end-to-end solution that enables the collaboration of the supply chain, customers and design house to enable effective collaboration in the value chain. Hosein will outline the main challenges manufacturing faces in collaboration with the supply chain and customers and the enablers in digitalisation of Design for Manufacturing.

• 10:30 | The Tech Provider – WE MAKE IT POSSIBLE! – Masters of Pie

Karl Maddix is the CEO of Masters of Pie, a developer of a software collaboration platform. Their platform integrates different data landscapes required for the design and acts as a platform for product data management. As effective collaboration begins with data, Masters of Pie worked closely with Unipart to realise the design platform. Karl will talk about the importance of working with 3D data and the challenges associated with the different languages designers, manufacturers and supply chain speak.

• 10:35 | The supply chain partner – WE SUPPORTED THE CASE STUDY! – Direc-Tec

Frances Hamilton is the Founder of Direc-Tec, a specialist in data engineering, process automation and business intelligence. Direc-Tec is working with Unipart and WAE to deliver a digital collaboration platform between the supply chain, designers, manufacturers and customers to erase silos and reach a single source of truth. Frances will present how they work with Unipart & WAE and how they are enabling easier communications between suppliers, designers and manufacturers.

• 10:40 | The UK Tech Founder – WE’RE INNOVATING IT – i4 Product Design

Reginald Harrison-Harsley looks after Software Development for i4 Product Design. i4 Product Design has over a decade of experience of designing products for injection moulding manufacture and have recently received funding from Innovate UK to develop novel software to address this need. In this talk, Reg will outline the problems faced by designers and product owners when trying to assess costs before a product has been designed, and how the Innovate UK feasibility study aims to solve them.

• 10:50 | Q&A
• 11:00 | Networking

• 13th April | Industrial Energy Efficiency
• 20th April | Web Based Customer Order Tracking
• 27th April | Continuous Improvement
• 4th May | Factory Floor and Production Systems
• 11th May | Predictive Maintenance
• 18th May | New Product Development
• 25th May | Quality Management
• 1st June | Mass Customisation
• 8th June | Circular Economy
• 15th June | Design for Manufacture
• 22nd June | Servitisation
• 29th June | Flexible Manufacturing