More digitalisation funding needed

It’s great news that Made Smarter, North West technology adoption pilot, has reached a major milestone, having funded more than 100 businesses. The scheme works with small and medium-sized manufacturers to help them introduce digital tools and technologies to help boost productivity and growth, and more recently, to help navigate the impact of Covid-19.

The new norm

If there’s one thing that the coronavirus pandemic has shown us, it’s that industry can be agile and innovative under the most arduous circumstances.

Culture wars

It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone reading this magazine that the UK lags way behind it’s global counterparts when it comes to the implementation of robotic automation - a fact that was underlined at a recent event hosted by automatica exhibition, the British Automation and Robot Association and VDMA Robotics + Automation. What is quite shocking though, is just how far behind the UK is - in 2018 we didn’t even make it into the global top 15 in terms of industrial robot installations, and overall robot density (number of industrial robots per 10,000 employees in manufacturing) is just 91 compared with 338 in Germany, which leads in Europe.

Release the robot potential!

Despite the emphatic Conserative win in the recent general election and talked-about flurry of contracts given the go-ahead in the immediate aftermath of the outcome, things still do not seem to be looking particularly rosey in the the UK industrial sector, with economists warning that the long term picture for the economy continues to be one of relative weakness. Of course, these are unprecedented times and I’m not going to pretend I understand all, if any, of the contributing factors, but coming at the issue from CDA-centric point of view, I feel that one thing is certain - if the UK is remain competitive in the global economy it must invest in increased automation.

Let's work together

Although not a particularly new soundbite, the trope that ‘data is the new oil’ seems to be more and more frequently referred to.

Will Extinction Rebellion be coming for your data?

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been touted as a powerful technology that will revolutionise the industrial manufacturing space. It is an amalgam of various uses at different phases of manufacturing, including generative design in product development, production forecasting in inventory management, and machine vision, defect inspection, production optimisation, and predictive maintenance in the production phase.

Food for thought

The urgency of global challenges - climate change, resource scarcity, food safety - is accelerating. How can a growing world population of 9 billion by 2050 access healthy food? How can we make travel and commuting safer with less environmental impact?

Funding crisis on the horizon?

The partners of the Horizon 2020 SOMA Consortium recently announced the end of their highly acclaimed project to advance the state-of-the-art robotic manipulation capabilities for industry.

5G - a real security risk?

Countries and trading blocs have a long history of using regulations to ensure that all products, including imported goods, meet consistent expected standards. In the 1970s, the UL94 standard on polymer flammability was initially seen - outside the US - as a form of import control. Goods made of non-compliant polymers would simply be left on the quayside.

Watch this space

When is comes to the space sector, while it might be NASA with its Mars Rovers and planet-hunting probes, or Elon Musk’s SpaceX and its Falcon Heavy megarocket that grab the headlines, the contribution made by the UK’s space industry should not be underestimated. Indeed, the sector has seen significant growth in income, exports and employment in recent years, with total income now standing at £14.8 billion.