Past event

Imagining the future of manufacturing

Engineers, manufacturers, University researchers (all levels) and industry or community representatives with an interest in contributing to collaborative projects to develop and deliver improvements to manufacturing are invited to join us for Imagining the future of manufacturing, an interactive workshop.

The aim of the workshop is to identify potential joint projects for manufacturing innovation: new or improved processes; systems; products and technologies; and services and delivery methods that improve the manufacturing industry.

This workshop is being run in partnership with Fife Council.

Innovation at the heart of manufacturing
Since the 1700's, innovation has been a driver of improvements in manufacturing – new materials, new means of transportation, new machines and electricity to power them have moved through several industrial revolutions. “Manufacturing is still an important, increasingly diverse industry in the UK today, despite the deindustrialisation and subsequent shrinking market of the past 70 years. Although the manufacturing sector has decreased in terms of employment share and share of national GDP, manufacturing output (both production and value) has continued to increase steadily since the end of the Second World War.” (The history of manufacturing in the UK)

Industry 4.0 is set to continue the process and has the potential to change the manufacturing industry forever. Technology 4.0 essentially boils down to machine learning and communication. The machines and robotics used within the industry actively “speak” to each in the form of sharing data. From this shared data, these machines feed information back to each other, improving adaptability, and to their human controllers, allowing them to tweak, perform maintenance, and to maximise productivity. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, the manufacturing industry is leading the way. (Always Innovating: A Look Back at the History of Innovation for Manufacturers)

Programme
Imagining the future of manufacturing will use an interactive process for stimulating conversations, enabling a group to work with different people and on different topics. The interactive process (based on World Café methodology) consists of a number of rounds, giving everyone the opportunity to contribute their thoughts, ideas, suggestions and perspectives.

By the end of the workshop, there should be some potential joint projects identified for tackling challenges and delivering innovation and 5 initial steps that need to be taken to get it off the ground.

More information on this event