Industry 4.0 is the latest industrial revolution, set to transform the manufacturing sector and beyond. The VEC recently joined other Northwest key players to explore the topic in a round table hosted by Business Insider.
Read the full article here
Gillian Murray, Director of the VEC, summarised:
“Industry 4.0 is the embodiment of modern manufacturing; you can align a lot of tools, techniques and innovations to it. We help companies become more productive by using advanced modelling, simulation and digital engineering tools and techniques, which is often the first step on the Industry 4.0 journey.
The biggest challenge is the breadth of it and where an organisation starts in order to add value. Another challenge is the pace of change in technology. We take companies on an innovation journey.
The Bentley project (which won Northwest Business Insider’s 2016 ‘Education in Business’ award) is a great example. We started helping them to design cars quicker and less expensively. Then we looked at how we manufacture them better. All the partners came together to explore how we can work together to explore how we can work together and deliver the right tools and toolsets back to the business. These pilot projects, or sandpits as we like to call them, are really important. They allow you to delivery something that’s critical to the business, see the return on investment, and capture it from future budgets in order to invest for the long-term.”
