Recommended For You
The UK has had a long, proud history as a manufacturing pioneer. From the Industrial Revolution to the post-war boom, the country has been at the forefront of progress. Today, amid a shifting global economic landscape, Britain remains a top 10 manufacturing powerhouse and employs more than 2.7 million people.
The key to maintaining this leading position has been the country’s ability to adapt and innovate. Even before this year’s turbulent events, more than 4 out of 5 UK industrial leaders said they were ready to invest in digital technologies to boost productivity and help their business to compete in a new industrial era.
The sudden lockdown in March heavily impacted manufacturing, just as it did all other industries. Challenging times require creative solutions and the sector showed its mettle in being one of the fastest to bounce back once the economy began to reopen. While the implications of COVID-19 will likely extend well beyond 2020, the experience of recent months has helped emphasise the need for innovative ideas in tackling and solving the biggest difficulties facing UK manufacturers and to support the development of the future products and solutions we need.
In addition to the short-term COVID-19 response, we also have ambitions to boost overall size, productivity, sustainability and resilience of manufacturing sector through effective development of new digital solutions. We launched the Manufacturing Made Smarter (MMS) challenge earlier this year – a UK government-funded programme aiming to inspire the innovators that will ultimately strengthen UK manufacturing and help the UK to become a global leader in the technology that enbables that transformation. That we were successful in getting the funding during this difficult time underpins the importance of this work and its urgency.
What is MMS?
Opened in July 2020, and formally announced by the UK Business Secretary in September, MMS is dedicated to the innovation of digital technologies within UK manufacturing. The programme provides support and funding for manufacturing and technology companies to jointly innovate in areas such as smart connected factories and connected supply chains, ultimately boosting their performance and size, creating new jobs but also enabling the creation of the next generation of products and services we need – for example net-zero solutions.
MMS is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Our goal is that by 2030, the UK will be a global industrial leader in creating, adopting and exporting advanced digital technologies, shaping how the world does business. This investment enables us to prioritise innovation investment to provide a crucial lift to some of the economy’s most important sectors.
5 Ways the MMS Can Help the UK Become a Global Manufacturing Leader in Industry 4.0
Ultimately, we hope that MMS can be the catalyst to bring together some of the smartest minds – the country’s disruptive thinkers – in addressing pressing needs in manufacturing and the supply chain. This, in turn, can help the UK to be at the forefront of global change. There are five specific ways we believe we can support this goal:
1. Inspiring entrepreneurs, researchers and engineers with an idea
Ideas or inventions alone won’t change the world – they need to be challenged to solve real problems and be able to explore different solutions. We seek to give talent with creative ways of solving challenges the platform they need to turn a side-project into a game-changing industrial innovation.
The tools for the new era of innovation, such a robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and augmented reality (AR), are all there. We look for innovators who can fuse these tools into creative solutions in order to make a big difference.
2. Funding ambitious ideas that may otherwise be considered too experimental or out-of-the-box for other investment streams
‘Here’s to the crazy ones…’ began an iconic Apple advert in the 90s. What seems crazy can often turn into something of immense value. Funding is core to that transformation. While traditional funding streams may be hesitant to invest in an unproven idea, our programme is on the lookout for the ideas others may have glossed over. We back innovators and entrepreneurs, giving them licence to test assumptions and explore new terrain. While we need to maximise impact for the greater good as we spend taxpayers hard-earned money, we continue to fund and support high-risk, high-reward ideas.
3. Creating and connecting a broad ecosystem of stakeholders for mutual support
One of the most common challenges in getting an idea off the ground is making the connections needed to support development. Forming alliances of people who share your vision or can make a piece of it happen is critical. We provide not only the funding to get started, but we also bring together a vibrant stakeholder base, including manufacturers and technology providers of all sizes and academic institutions, to lay the product roadmap towards realisation. Transformative ideas can be found in all organisations, no matter their size or location.
4. Build in diversity from the start
Put simply, diverse teams deliver better outcomes. It is vital that diversity of skills, perspectives, outlooks are embedded within teams and solutions. While there are requirements to act in a fair way, organisations should go further than that. Cherish and nurture the diversity in your teams, encourage challenge and debate of ideas and approaches, and ensure the people for whom you are designing solutions have had a say in how it should be.
There is immense untapped potential across the country that can be harnessed to create the transformed future for manufacturing.
5. Identifying where real impact can be created
The March lockdown tested global supply chains to their limits, highlighting vulnerabilities and bottlenecks in the world’s economy. The importance of manufacturing and supply chains has been underlined many times during this period. The opportunity to have real impact is significant across all sectors and aspects of value chain.
While the UK’s supply chains performed admirably, there is always room for improvement. Our first challenge has specifically targeted ways to connect and manage supply chains better, giving the country the robustness to continue operating under extreme circumstances.
As we move beyond the pandemic response, the creation of the next generation of products and services the world needs is also critical. By harnessing technology, we can boost the UK’s strength in areas such as medicines manufacturing, net-zero transport, advanced food production and in many other areas.
Our focus is to encourage the broad range of capabilities to focus on those areas of impact, and collaborate with others who either face the problem or have part of the solution.
Supporting innovation
MMS is a team effort. We bring together public and private organisations with a common goal of raising the bar for the entire industry. This broad support is necessary to achieve the programme’s goals. Rockwell Automation’s role as an advisor to the programme has been invaluable, providing us with deep industry insight and connections to help pursue our ambitions.
For us to have the impact we desire, we need to build this network even further. We hope that both forward-looking manufacturing businesses and creative individuals alike will connect with our community and find out about the new challenges as they open and how they can participate.
If you’re interested in finding out how you can get involved, visit our homepage.
Published December 4, 2020
