Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit is the annual gathering of the industrial elite. Leaders, senior executives and decision-makers representing all industries across the manufacturing sector converge with thought leaders and industrial futurists for two days of knowledge-sharing, debate and discussion that shapes the industry for the coming 12 months.
Now in its 16th year, the award-winning summit is a catalyst for transformation, covering the topics most pertinent to manufacturing leaders alongside economic and market factors, operational challenges and organisation challenges.
This year’s event focused on practical solutions and industry-leading insights featuring the highest calibre of speakers, case studies and interactive sessions with polls, networking opportunities and deeper dives into the technologies shaping the future of the sector.
Lessons from digital superheroes
Digital transformation doesn’t have to be daunting—and it doesn’t begin with technology. In his opening keynote on day one of the summit, Asif Moghal, Director at Autodesk, spoke about the five digital superpowers that any design and manufacturing business can develop. He also shared inspiring stories of seemingly ordinary businesses achieving extraordinary results through digital innovation and offered valuable insights from their transformative journeys.
He said: “A company’s digital superpowers are not about software, technology features, functions or products. What they are is capabilities that if activated inside an organisation, can lead to really dramatic results.
“There are five of these capabilities. Number one is mass customisation. This is the ability to personalise a product for an individual customer or segment of your market, but without carrying that additional engineering bespoke overhead. This will give you the power to charge more for personalised products, and customers are actually prepared to wait longer for the things that are personalised for them.
“The second one is digital collaboration, which is the ability to communicate with your entire network, inside and outside of your organisation, with greater speed, effectiveness and quality. It will enable you to spot innovations and commercialise them much faster and at lower risk.
“The third is flexible manufacturing, which is all about developing and maintaining the right balance of manufacturing capacity and capability across your network. This will allow you to make decisions on the manufacturing processes much earlier so you can really ramp up the quality and profitability of what you manufacture.
“The fourth is around customer experience, which is around connecting with your customers at a much deeper level and understanding what they value above and beyond what we call the table stakes. This will make you far more strategic in the lives of your customers, driving up customer retention and loyalty.
“The last digital superpower is smart services; putting data at the centre of your business and using it to develop a series of insight-based value acts for whoever your stakeholders. This will allow you to assemble the data you already have in your business, and interpret it in ways that will allow you to decide how you want to respond to opportunities or threats that are coming your way, which in turn, lead to greater business stability and growth.”
Benefits of digital twins within Edwards Manufacturing Enterprise eco-system
Dan Middleton, Head of Innovation at Edwards – Atlas Copco, explained the company’s strategic approach to net zero manufacturing using digital-twin technology. Edwards’ approach involves an extensive digital asset library and FlexSim-optimised processes, promoting lean and agile manufacturing, rapid enhancements in production and boosting business performance.
Using a novel digital-twin approach that effectively integrates its business processes enables Edwards to evaluate the impact its operations have on market trends and business cycles, and to support investment decisions in equipment, facilities, and workforce.
Dan commented: “It’s taken us a year to go on our digital twin journey and we started by asking why we needed to change and what we wanted to achieve. We needed to satisfy our customers better, ensure that our projects finish on time and achieve ROI, improve the adoption of change, and make sure we attract talent.
“There are many benefits to digital twins. Typically they will impact your efficiencies increase productivity, give you intuitive understanding of where your quality issues are, and allow you to innovate quickly.
“Digital twins now allow us to do real-time monitoring, which put us in a much better position. We can also make data-driven decisions with no more guess work – we know exactly what is going to happen. And they have also improved our collaboration; not only working with manufacturing engineers, but with planners and general managers – giving them a much better understanding around what’s going on in the factory.
“They also allow us to mitigate downtime and allocate resources that will improve our quality control. This has been a game changer for us. If you focus on your data first – and understand what you have and don’t have – you’ll start to unlock all sorts of other things within your business which will allow you to scenario plan and conduct risk assessments.
“When it comes to making the most of digital twins it’s not about technology; focus on your problem first. Everyone’s heard of fail fast; with digital twins you can fail fast, risk-free. The only investment you have to make is your people’s time, which will cost far less than investing in the wrong technology. And, in terms of ROI, digital twins enable you to show your senior leaders where the money is ultimately going.”
Panel discussion: Adapting to digital transformation: integrating new technologies
A panel discussion kicked-off the afternoon, delving into the challenges and opportunities that come with adapting to digital transformation in manufacturing. As AI, IoT and automation revolutionise the industry, leaders must navigate the complexities of integrating these cutting-edge technologies while maintaining continuity with legacy systems.
The conversation explored strategies for achieving seamless transitions, minimising disruptions and maximising the benefits of digitalisation. The panellists, Clare Bailey, Safran Seats, Supply Chain Master Data Manager, Ioana Hera, Rolls-Royce, Head of Improvement and Alison Beard-Gunter, Summit’s Chair and Independent Consultant, shared insights on best practices, common pitfalls and how to future-proof operations in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
Starting off the questions, Henry Anson, Director at The Manufacturer asked what practical steps manufacturers can take to ensure that legacy systems and cutting-edge technologies like AI and IoT can coexist without compromising efficiency.
Alison said: “Change management is important. We can teach people about new models and terms, but it’s vital that you work with the people on the floor, so they understand what the changes are going to be and when technologies are going to be integrated and worked with.
“Right now, we’re all working in a Frankenstein system, some older people will be used to that, but as younger people come in, they’re a little bit horrified by some of the interfaces and user experience they’re having. The technical on the ground and practical change management is critical.”
Claire added: “My experience has been trying to integrate and make work newer technologies while still having older technologies in place and having intermediary solutions to help with that.
“There are lots of buzzwords which senior people in organisations say that they want to implement, but they don’t know how to go about that. That then becomes a great challenge. Being able to sort of buffer against it by using that newer technology, separated from the older technology. This helps you to be able to do that so that they can be managed and coexist, because you’re never going to get them talking directly to each other.”
The conversation then turned to the challenges of educating employees and encouraging them to embrace digital transformation, which many are still resistance to do so.
“Leadership plays a role in this, ensuring that everybody understands what the imperative is. Then to get people involved in how much autonomy they have towards that change and what’s going to happen to them when that change comes. People are okay with change if it’s for the right reasons,” said Alison.
Speaking from experience, Claire added: “One of the things that I’ve experienced is working in organisations when people haven’t worked anywhere other than that organisation, so they don’t seem to know what exists outside.
“This one of the main reasons I like to come to this event is because it gives me opportunity to see what others do. For me, one of the key things is to help people to see what is possible and finding that leader who can really drive that change through the organisation.”
When opened to the floor to the audience, the question how to measure the adoption rate for ERP systems. Ioana said: “This is difficult as an ERP; this is not going to provide specific measures.
I would look at how many people still use Excel spreadsheets? How many people are still referring to the database that you have saved somewhere as a comfort blanket. You need to measure it by observing, talking to people and finding out their problems with the new system and how to solve those.”
To wrap things up, the panel were asked for the most common pitfalls they see when implementing digital transformation projects and how can they be avoided.
Alison argued that businesses need to be bold and decide instead of keeping an old system still in place while implementing a new one. “You need to pull the support around the new system, if not it will fall.”
Claire added: “It is about the right balance between people and projects. I have witnessed things go bad when people are not educated to the right level.
“The system is a supporting tool to the business process, not the other way around. And sometimes we forget that. We call it an IT project, and it’s not an IT project, it’s a business process project.”
Reskilling our people for a new technology era
Technology advances don’t just mean keeping abreast of product and service changes. These changes also directly impact the people who will be delivering these programmes. As we enter a new technology era, how can engineering and manufacturing industries ensure their people are equipped with the right tools, the right skills and the right processes to deliver in this increasingly competitive age.
In the afternoon’s first keynote saw Neil Forsyth, Babcock International, shared some examples of training and upskilling in a global engineering business, while looking at what best practices we can use for training programmes and the various ways we can work in partnership with training providers and educational institutions to provide that extra competitive edge.
“When looking at the digital skills gap, don’t be afraid to ask staff what they don’t know. As a manager, can you say with certainty what your staff need? We’ev asked our staff where their shortfalls and knowledge gaps are.
“Once we know that, we can then look at the training. That’s what we’re now starting to do. We are a hugely data rich company, but to actually do something with data, and actually dive into it to understand what it means and decide what you’re going to do with it. That’s the real skill.
“We’ve been working to upskill our employees. They’ve been doing 12 months apprenticeships to gain these data skills and plug this gap. We don’t need new employees. We just need to retrain our existing workforce to get them ready for the new age.
“We are looking to develop the right skills to bring the next generation through. We need to embrace and excite them about manufacturing.”
Practical adoption of AI: transforming manufacturing for a smarter future
In the final keynote of Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit day one, Charlie Cornish, EMEA Presales Director, Epicor shared a real example of a modern AI-infused ERP and how AI will change the way employees interact with their ERP application, helping them to make decisions more quickly and use the system more effectively.
Additionally, he discussed how AI will optimise key business processes, for example, enabling more accurate inventory control and sales forecasting and utilising machine learning for efficient AP automation.
“Within the ERP space, we are seeing AI become a central and core part of the way ERP systems are working. Not only is it fundamental today, but we will see it become fundamental in the future. And there are some key use cases where AI is already built into applications of today.
“They are delivering ten times value. People are under time pressure to get more out of their day-to-day jobs. Therefore, they need to be enabled to use the data to make informed decisions in a quicker and more fundamental way.
“And we have to become more people centric. The industrial user interface has traditionally been behind the times but AI is changing that, and we are seeing that the way humans interact with their applications is changing. AI has fundamentally changed the way that we are working. AI infused industry is here and has matured to the extent that we are building it into products today.”
For further information on Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit visit the event website.
