Made Smarter Technology Accelerator Industry Briefing

UK manufacturers can often struggle to innovate and adopt digital technologies. If they do invest, it is typically a long decision-making process as these investments cut into their low profit margins, require greater hybrid skills to manage them and often don’t fit into established product life-cycles, which can be seven times higher than the average lifetime of a digital product development time.

This event is now closed and has already happened to watch the webinar recording click here.

The UK manufacturing industry will need to shift if it is to keep its competitiveness on the international market and better integrate with the digital sector.

The Made Smarter Technology Accelerator will work with leading UK manufacturers to set the challenges that will help to shape and develop the right technology solutions for industry-wide needs. It ultimately will bring about this shift and aid recovery of the UK manufacturing sector.

Delivered by Digital Catapult, funded by UKRI through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, as part of the national Made Smarter movement, Made Smarter Technology Accelerator is a national programme, set to fast forward and shape the UK’s technology adoption directly into industry.

Digital Catapult is currently in the industry partner onboarding stage, and in this webinar will be covering the programme for medium to large manufacturers. Digital Catapult will be joined by Jürgen Wolfgang Maier CBE, Chairman, Digital Catapult and co-chair of UK’s Made Smarter programme, and Chris Courtney, UK Research and Innovation’s Challenge Director Manufacturing Made Smarter. The industry focused webinar will provide further details about the opportunities the programme provides and answer questions from prospective challenge owners.

Why attend?

From this session medium and large manufacturers will:

• Gain a further understanding about the Made Smarter movement, it’s mission and purpose
• Explore the challenges faced by industry and the opportunities the Made Smarter Technology programme provides in pivoting industry through the adoption of advanced digital technologies
• Understand further details about the opportunities the programme provides and how to get involved
• Ask key questions about becoming prospective challenge owners and programme involvement

Who is the event for?

The programme works with both leading UK manufacturers and the innovation community to develop innovative technology solutions to many of the UK’s core manufacturing challenges.

Digital Catapult is currently onboarding our industry partners from SMEs* to large UK manufacturers, this briefing is designed for organisations operating at this level. This session will be of particular interest for:

• Prospective challenge owners
• Organisations working across the manufacturing sector

It is important to note at this stage this webinar is specifically for potential industry and technology partners as a match-funded programme and is focused for medium to large manufacturers.

*SMEs are defined by the European Commission as having less than 250 persons employed. They should also have an annual turnover of up to EUR 50 million, or a balance sheet total of no more than EUR 43 million.

Please note: This industry briefing is designed for industry partners, specifically medium to large manufacturers. It will cover the programme overview and benefits of joining this match-funded opportunity as a sponsor or partner. It is not relevant for startups and scaleups. In the meantime, startups and scaleups can register their interest here and we will let you know once our open call is live and briefing webinar for startups online.

Agenda

• 14:00 Welcome and introduction to speakers – Dr Nick Wright, Head of Manufacturing Industries, Digital Catapult
• 14:10 – Keynote on the opportunity of digital for manufacturing – Jürgen Wolfgang Maier CBE, Chairman, Digital Catapult and co-chair of UK’s Made Smarter programme
• 14:25 – Introduction to the Made Smarter Innovation programme – Chris Courtney, Challenge Director Manufacturing Made Smarter at UK Research and Innovation
• 14:35 – Overview – How to get involved with the Made Smarter Technology Accelerator? – Justin Cross, Innovation Partner, Digital Catapult
• 14:50 – Audience Q & A
• 15:00 – Close

About the programme

The Made Smarter Technology Accelerator will achieve the UK Government’s goals of bringing greater digitalisation to the manufacturing sector, driving improved productivity, higher value jobs and accelerating the move towards a carbon net zero supply chain. The programme will work to deliver economic growth for both supply and demand across the industry.

The delivery of the programme will be facilitated by Digital Catapult, enhanced by its technology-agnostic status, alongside its network of startups, in-house technical expertise, and access to cutting edge facilities. By running this programme, we will allow startups to develop new business models, products, services, applications for the manufacturing industries, and help build a strong supply of innovation to the sector.