Education all areas

Readers of The Manufacturer cannot have failed to notice that Smart Factory Expo will be held at Birmingham’s NEC on 7-8 of June as part of Manufacturing & Engineering Week 2023 (www.mandeweek.co.uk)

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ABOVE: M&E Week promises to be a festival of industrial innovation

Key Takeaways

• Manufacturing & Engineering Week will feature two Keynote Theatres and six Solutions Theatres

• Engineers Without Borders UK will be launching its Global Responsibility Competency Compass

• RS will be presenting findings from a recent survey of more than 1,000 maintenance professionals

• The Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) will be hosting its free educational Masterclass sessions

Smart Factory Expo (full preview article on page 6) will incorporate features such as Innovation Alley and associated events such as The Manufacturer Top 100, SME Growth Summit and the Manufacturing Digitalisation Summit. M&E Week also promises to be a festival of industrial innovation and in this article we look at some of the other elements taking place alongside Smart Factory Expo which readers might wish to plan in to their visit.

Education has always been a major part of the Smart Factory Expo experience, and this has only expanded through its integration into M&E Week. A major attraction of the show is the freeto-attend conference programme that will take place across two Keynote Theatres and six Solutions Theatres.

The first Keynote Theatre hosts a range of speakers and panel sessions on a wide range of relevant topics across both days of the event. The full programme can be viewed at www.mandeweek.co.uk/ conference-agenda. One keynote on 7 June that immediately catches the eye is from Katherine Bennett CBE, CEO of the HighValue Manufacturing Catapult. Speaking on the topic of Innovation as the Key to Business Transformation & Growth, the session discusses the importance of innovation to change manufacturing businesses for the better and includes examples of how Katherine has seen this working with companies that the HVMC are supporting. Also of great interest is the panel session on 8 June titled, The unstoppable rise of Digital Twins. This session, featuring Ben Wilkinson, Head of Digital Technology and Nipuni Karunaratne, Model Factory Manager, Rolls-Royce Civil Aerospace, covers Rolls-Royce’s introduction of a radical new business model in the 1990s that catalysed the development of early analytics. This grew over time into a connected ecosystem of digital twins and in this session, the panel will explore that journey and examine the cultural, behavioural and technological factors that enabled it.

The second keynote theatre is dedicated to the Maintec event. Maintec is the longest standing exhibition for the predictive maintenance, reliability and asset management industry and throughout its long history, the event has continued to focus on uptime and the tools, innovation, technology and people that support it - all topics that are dear to the hearts of The Manufacturer readers.

Delving into the Maintec Theatre agenda there are some real gems with everything from a session on the Commonwealth