What is the Made Smarter Innovation Network?
To support and accelerate the digitalisation of the manufacturing industry, KTN is working with UKRI to drive innovation to support the adoption of digital technology through Made Smarter. Made Smarter 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.
Read more here
The webinars, which will all be recorded, will be of interest to manufacturers aspiring to be more productive, efficient, competitive and resilient through the use of digital technologies, integrators, innovators and digital technology solution providers who want to reach a manufacturing audience. For a taster of what to expect, take a look at our previous webinar series here and read through our case study on Tribosonics and ENGEL, which followed the last series of webinars.
Webinars - You can select as many free webinar sessions as you would like to attend.
1st Feb 12:00-13:00 - Innovative Digital Technologies in Predictive Maintenance
This event will explore 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 (eg. vibration, temperature) that show a predictable connection with component life, combined with AI/machine learning. Benefits include reduced downtime and costs. We will hear 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.
8th Feb 12:00-13:00 - Innovative Digital Technologies in Net Zero
In this event we will be looking at how manufacturers can gather, process, present and analyse data from throughout the factory to enable rigorous management decisions regarding energy reduction. This can be for direct cost reduction through lower energy bills or in order to reduce the carbon footprint of manufactured goods which comes under increasing scrutiny from consumers. Continued measurement and monitoring can support and confirm capex investment decisions over time, and continued trend analysis will drive further resource savings.
15th Feb 12:00-13:00 - Innovative Digital Technologies in Supply Chain
In this event we will be looking at how manufacturers can gather, process and present data from the factory in sufficient detail to give customers visibility of their orders. Of course, 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, rather than spend time on reactive expediting and fire fighting after problems comes to light.
22nd Feb 12:00-13:00 - 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.
1st March 12:00-13:00 - 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 will explore the digital technologies and associated Systems across supply chains. Specifically, technologies that can drive and enable opportunities for new products or variants.
8th March 12:00-13:00 - 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 will explore 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.
15th March 12:00-13:00 - Innovative Digital Technologies in Flexible Manufacturing
Production efficiency often centres around a consistent product and process, optimised to run with minimal downtime. 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 will explore how digital technology can help manufacturers maintain efficiency and asset utilisation whilst offering the customer what they want.
22nd March 12:00-13:00 - 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.
Register for free here