Made Smarter Innovation Network Webinar Series: 1st February – 22nd March 2022

Made Smarter Innovation is one of the Government’s challenge programmes, investing £147m into creating a fully connected, dynamic manufacturing ecosystem inspiring innovation across academia, technology providers and manufacturers.

The Made Smarter Innovation Network webinars showcased the journeys of manufacturers who have been innovative in their adoption of digital technologies to improve performance, alongside digital technology providers creating innovative solutions to aid the manufacturer’s journey.

The webinars in the 8-week series each showcased a manufacturer who has worked together with a technology provider, as well as a technology start-up and supporter, who manufacturers can utilise to help solve manufacturing problems.

The webinars, which are all ran on Tuesdays from 12:00 – 13:00 were recorded and are available to watch below. The recordings will be of interest to manufacturers who want to reach a manufacturing audience and are aspiring to be more productive, efficient, competitive, and resilient using digital technologies, integrators, innovators, and digital technology solution.

View the recordings below.

1^st February 2022 – Recording: Innovative Digital Technologies in Predictive Maintenance

This event explored the emergence of products and services that inform manufacturers as to when their shop floor equipment is likely to require maintenance. These are based on the measurement of various parameters that show a predictable connection with component life, combined with AI/machine learning.

We heard from both providers of these services and from manufacturers that have seen the benefits and provide a meeting place for the two communities – technology providers/developers and interested manufacturers.

8^th February 2022 – Recording: Innovative Digital Technologies in Net Zero

In this event we looked at how manufacturers can gather, process, present and analyse data from the factory to enable rigorous management decisions regarding energy reduction.

This can be for direct cost reduction through lower energy bills or to reduce the carbon footprint of manufactured goods which comes under increasing scrutiny from consumers.

15^th February 2022 – Recording: Innovative Digital Technologies in Supply Chain

In this event we looked at how manufacturers can gather, process and present data from the factory in sufficient detail to give customers visibility of their orders. This level of granularity is also extremely helpful to the factory management team to fully understand work in progress and allow management time to be spent proactively maximising customer experience.

22^nd February 2022, Recoding: Innovative Digital Technologies in Continuous Improvement

Capturing data to support decision making is crucial to modern continuous improvement programmes, but as the volume of data grows exponentially, powerful analytical and visualisation techniques are needed to bring the data to life. This area of innovation is progressing at a fast pace, and we will highlight the significant benefits of dedicated solutions in this technology area. The benefits of incremental gains compound over time, so the sooner you start the greater the performance gains over slower rivals.

1^st March 2022, Recording: Innovative Digital Technologies in New Product Development

Product development might be driven by changing customer demands or may be unlocked by new production capability to satisfy existing customer demand. This event explored the digital technologies and associated systems across supply chains – specifically, technologies that can drive and enable opportunities for new products or variants.

8^th March 2022, Recording coming soon: Innovative Digital Technologies in Quality Management

Ensuring your finished product meets the requirements of your customers is the difference between selling your product (and not). This event explored how the application of digital technology may improve production quality directly or reduce the time involved in ensuring quality through management and data sharing activity.

15^th March 2022, Recording: Innovative Digital Technologies in Flexible Manufacturing

Production efficiency often centres around a consistent product and process, optimised to run with minimal down-time. But what happens when customers demand more product variation, where you need to switch a process from one product to another, or where batch sizes are small?

This event explored how digital technology can help manufacturers maintain efficiency and asset utilisation whilst offering the customer what they want.

22^nd March 2022, Recording: Innovative Digital Technologies in Production Systems

Integrated digital production management systems within a business can deliver control and optimisation of manufacturing, product lifecycle and resource management processes.

The main systems are SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), which controls the machines and equipment, and MES (Manufacturing Execution System) which controls the activities on the factory floor both within and between each operation.