A festival of innovation

A combination of online and live events, Manufacturing & Engineering Week will be a comprehensive celebration of British engineering according to organisers Nineteen Group. Aerospace Manufacturing reports.   

Running from June 7-10 Manufacturing & Engineering Week is described as a festival of innovation that will showcase the very best that UK industry has to offer.

The live element of the week will run at the Birmingham NEC, on June 8-9. As well as giving the chance to talk to a huge number of the UK’s most innovative and creative companies, Manufacturing & Engineering Week has a full programme of education, workshops, talks and presentations, with several fun events thrown in.

Helping visitors keep abreast of the latest trends and thinking across industry is a major aim of the trade show and there will be a full programme of CPD accredited high-level keynote presentations, panel discussions and case studies. These will cover a range of sectors including aerospace, automotive, food and beverage, motorsport, energy and renewables, pharmaceutical, space and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), with a particular focus on strategy for SMEs and OEMs.

Industry faces both challenges and opportunities, and the topics of the presentations address a wide variety of hot issues. These include the future of the sector, embracing the need for digital transformation, incorporating artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and automation, Net Zero - the road to greener manufacturing, diversity and the skills gap, Brexit and beyond, cyber security, navigating changing laws and more.

Exhibitor companies who have solved challenges for customers with the latest innovative technology will pass on their experience though a series of informative workshops.

All four together

Manufacturing & Engineering Week at the NEC is made up of four co-located two-day shows: The Design Engineering Expo; Engineering Expo; Manufacturing Expo and Maintec. The Design Engineering Expo is an event where the UK’s design engineering community can connect directly with leading suppliers from design services, electronics, embedded design through to testing and measuring to drive efficiencies and propel the future of design engineering in the UK.

The Engineering Expo showcases next generation engineering and tech solutions from Britain’s best suppliers across the entire engineering supply chain. Whatever the engineering sector, Engineering Expo will provide the UK’s engineering community with practical advice to reduce costs, streamline and drive the industry forward.

The Manufacturing Expo has been created specifically for manufacturing process and management professionals to keep up to date and discover the technologies and equipment to ensure the efficient running of the manufacturing site, maintain a competitive edge and optimise manufacturing process and production for the future.

Lastly, Maintec is a long-standing exhibition dedicated to the maintenance, reliability and asset management industry. Throughout its 40-year plus history, the event has continued to meet the needs of the maintenance engineer covering industrial, buildings and supply chain maintenance engineering as well as providing an opportunity to source the very latest technology available on the market.

Industry advances

Innovation is the major theme of Manufacturing & Engineering Week, and this is underlined by a dedicated Innovation Zone, sponsored by Arrow, a global provider of technology products, services and solutions. The Innovation Zone will showcase live demonstrations of the UK’s most cutting-edge products, helping visitors discover the latest technologies that are shaping the future of British industry.  Highlights include an AI car and the world’s first VTOL biplane, displayed by Coventry University’s Formula Student and UAS Challenge Teams, in association with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Manufacturing & Engineering Week will also have the award-winning Cyber Demonstrator as a central feature of this year’s show. The manufacturing sector is now the third most targeted for cyber-attacks, with risks only likely to deepen and broaden as digitisation grows across all industries.

Many manufacturers are only at the beginning of their cyber-security journey and are looking to gain a better understanding of the current threats and source the products and services to increase cyber resilience. The live Cyber Demonstrator won ‘Best Feature Area’ at the Exhibition News Awards 2022 and will be recreated at Manufacturing & Engineering Week to deliver live immersive demonstrations on how to prepare for cyber threats, explore unknown areas of vulnerability and survive in the new age of information warfare targeted at the manufacturing and engineering sector.

On the environmental front, as the world and UK gears up to meet the challenge of protecting the global climate, the importance of sustainability for the industry is higher than ever before. In this spirit Manufacturing & Engineering Week will be contributing by running a Net Zero event.

Total emissions of 136.8 tons of COâ‚‚ have been calculated to be generated during the running of the event, a total which includes venue usage, materials and exhibitor and staff transport and accommodation. To offset this, the Manufacturing & Engineering Week, in association with its sustainability partner, Forest Nation, will plant more than 5,000 trees in a dedicated forest to make the event Net Zero. The team will also plant a further tree for every visitor who attends.

Away from the serious engineering, the Great Egg Race is an exciting live challenge taking place over both days of the event. Inspired by the TV show of the same name, engineers will compete to build gadgets to propel an uncooked egg over a wall into a tractor trailer. A compere will host the challenge with winners presented with prizes onsite.

Visitor passes for Manufacturing & Engineering Week are free-of-charge and include access to all co-located events over the two days.

www.mandeweek.co.uk