Consultants' Clinic at Digital Manufacturing Week is a great opportunity for companies to help overcome major problems like digital readiness and business costs.
If you’re a manufacturer struggling to get ahead in a competitive world, a consultants’ clinic can go a long way to helping your company overcome those obstacles and become a major manufacturing player.
The Consultants’ Clinic at Smart Factory Expo offers digital manufacturers an opportunity to receive advice on matters such as operational excellence, business transformation, digital readiness, and reducing funding for IT and OT costs. Each manufacturer can get a free 15 minute opportunity in which to ask questions and receive advice from leading business consultants.
Steven Barr, MD of Edge Digital Manufacturing is one of the consultants. He is offering advice on companies digital readiness. He believe too many manufacturers are behind the curve on innovation.
“A lot of them get stuck in the early days and don’t know where to go. What we help them to do is give them a vision of how digital technologies will help give them a great leap forward.”
Steven says events like Digital Manufacturing Week are a fantastic opportunity for manufacturers to meet firms who overcame problems that they are currently experiencing.
“At the basic level, it raises awareness, but it also helps you meet peers who can offer advice and guidance, whether it’s a supply chain company. You can find other companies with similar or analogous problems or opportunities. Those are the ones they really need to talk to. My company does a lot of introductions, a lot of peer-to-peer engagement to get people inspired. This is a really good conference for that.”
Two others involved in the Consultants’ Clinic are innovation consultants Charlie Rea and Rob Munro. They both believe digital manufacturers will face similar problems over the next few years. As Rob explains:
Manufacturers are going to face a major supply chain disruption if Brexit happens. How will they then reconfigure their supply chains? Digitalisation technology is also a big challenge. For companies, it’s not just about employing new software, it’s also about configuring your business to take advantage of digitalisation.”
Skills are also important challenges that will face manufacturers in the upcoming years, not just STEM graduates, but boardroom skills. He says boardrooms needs to acquire “better strategic thinking and better innovation thinking so that they can become more effective leaders. That’s a faster way to boost GDP.”
Smart Factory Expo is Europe’s largest digital manufacturing show – presenting the most extensive free programme of presentations across seven stages, 150+ exhibitors, and thousands of digitally-savvy manufacturers.
It is the largest component of Digital Manufacturing Week, an annual celebration of UK manufacturing excellence that takes place in the UK every November.
Reporting by Harry Wise
