Page 4 - Summer 2025

The Five Pillars of Smart Manufacturing Week 4. Innovation and Smart Technologies:
SMART MANUFACTURING WEEK
One of the UK’s largest engineering exhibitions,
Smart Manufacturing Week, now in its fourth
year, returned to the National Exhibition Centre
in Birmingham on 4th. and 5th. June. Around
450 exhibitors were supported by around 140
presentations covering Automation and Robotics,
Design and Innovation, Digital Transformation, IOOT
and Connectivity, Industrial Data and AI, Institute
for Manufacturing Masterclass, Leadership and
Strategy, and a Technology Showcase Arena.
The exhibition itself was sub-divided into Smart
Factory Expo, Design Engineering Expo, Drives and
Controls, Maintec, Air-Tec and Fluid Power and
Systems. The majority of the exhibitors (220) were
located in the Smart Factory Expo and Design
Engineering Expo areas. Key features included the
STEM Showcase, now extended to include school
year students as well as those in further education,
affording the opportunity to interact directly with
industry experts, and a new ‘Smart Tank’ allowing
entrepreneurs to pitch business ideas and product
concepts to a panel of industry experts, based
on a well-known TV format and forming part of
the ‘Innovation Alley’, which featured emerging
manufacturing technologies grouped under ‘People’,
‘Product’, ‘Process’ and ‘Planet’.
New for 2025 was the Technology Showcase Theatre
which afforded visitors an opportunity to view future
developments and prototypes in fields such as
advanced robotics and wearable technologies, whilst
the Manufacturing Digitalisation Summit returned
providing a two-day conference specifically for
industry leaders and incorporated The Manufacturer
Top 100 Awards.
4 5
Other new features for 2025 included the VIP demo
experience from Fracture Reality and the ‘Accubots’
from accu.co.uk. JoinXR by Fracture Reality allowed
attendees to discover how extended reality is
revolutionising engineering workflows by accelerating
design processes and decision-making, aligning
cross-functional teams with greater clarity, scaling
technical training and onboarding, and reducing
costly misunderstandings in complex builds.
Meanwhile the ‘Accubots’ (miniature 150g fighting
robots) represented a scaled down version of the
larger Accubots competition.
Become a member: https://membermojo.co.uk/ie
Become a subscriber: https://membermojo.co.uk/subscriber
Become a sponsor: https://membermojo.co.uk/sponsor
Smart Manufacturing Week 2025 identified,
through research conducted by Hennik Research,
five themes that are considered to be key to the
manufacturing sector.
The partnership aims to support up to 47,000 young
people to enjoy their own Big Bang at School day with
special science and engineering activities, workshops
and projects designed to arouse passion and curiosity
for all things related to STEM. The objective is to bring
tyhe same fun, excitement and interactive learning
experiences that are provided by the Big Bang fair to
the classroom to benefit 11 to 14-year-olds.
1. Sustainability and Circular Economy:
Sustainability and the challenge of achieving
Net Zero are seen as both a regulatory
necessity and a catalyst for innovation and
efficiency. As such the exhibition aimed to
provide a platform for visitors to explore
solutions that minimised environmental
impact, and a Sustainability Stream in the
event’s educational agenda.
2. Digital Transformation:
The integration of digital technologies is
transforming manufacturing and so the
show sought to highlight the tools needed
to enhance operations. This was reflected in
the seven Solutions Theatre presentations
incorporated into the educational agenda,
and in the Manufacturing Digitalisation Summit
where the importance of the application of
digital technologies to enhance processes,
efficiencies and outcomes for manufacturing
formed part of the programme.
3. Workforce Development and Upskilling:
This pillar was a response to the fact
that over the past year 97 per cent of
manufacturers reported the hiring and
retention of skilled workers to be a major
challenge. Manufacturers are notably
increasingly requiring expertise in areas
such as automation, AI and data analysis,
and with 80 per cent stating that they are
struggling to find workers with the necessary
digital skills, workforce development has been
recognised as a growing concern. In response
the show sought to establish partnerships
with Women into Science and Engineering,
the Women’s Engineering Society, Innovate
UK and Cambridge University’s Institute
for Manufacturing, and set up a dedicated
Manufacturers and Engineers of the Future
Programme. Sessions were purposefully
organised to address upskilling and provide
opportunities for both employers and potential
employees to connect.
Become a member: https://membermojo.co.uk/ie
Become a subscriber: https://membermojo.co.uk/subscriber
Become a sponsor: https://membermojo.co.uk/sponsor
This pillar recognised that innovation has to
be at the heart of modern manufacturing
and so the Innovation Alley was introduced to
draw attention to breakthrough innovation,
in particular from start-ups and university
spinouts. The ‘Smart Tank’ and Technology
Showcase Arena were also introduced under
this pillar.
5. Supply Chain Resilience:
This pillar highlighted the importance of
maintaining a resilient supply chain and was
enhanced by promoting innovative strategies
and new technologies that aim to overcome
disruption and create agile systems. An
example was Epicor with its kinetic cloud-
based ERP solution.
Supporting Exhibitions
Alongside Smart Manufacturing Week were
the already established TCT3Sixty, dedicated
specifically to additive manufacturing
(3D-printing), Med Tech, Subcon and
Automechanika.
This year TCT3Sixty featured around 150 exhibitors and
ten speakers presenting on an Insights stage and an
Innovation stage, with topics including ‘Optimising
Additive Manufacturing with AI and Digital Twin’
(Javaid Butt, Professor of Manufacturing and Product
Design, Birmingham City University), ‘Enabling faster
Development of Space Propulsion Technologies
by Additive Manufacturing of VDM780’ (Juri Munk,
Researcher, DLR), ‘Realising an Order-of-Magnitude
Growth in the UK Aerospace Additive Manufacturing
Sector’ (Matthew Bailey, Lead Technologist, Aerospace
Technology Institute), ‘Boosting Productivity with
Beam-Shaping: Insights from using AMCM M290-2FLX’
(Ruaridh Mitchinson, AM Technology Manager, The
Manufacturing Technology University of Bristol), and
‘Can you dig it? 3D Technology for Museum Research,
Conservation and Exhibition’ (Tom Ranson, 3D
Visualisation Specialist, Natural History Museum).
Javaid Butt most notably said:
“I believe that innovation in AM is no longer
primarily about machines and materials, but
is increasingly becoming more about data
intelligence. Digital twins and AI together redefine
that intelligence is offering a pathway to smarter,
sustainable and more adaptable manufacturing”
Other highlights of this exhibition included Project
TAMPA, an ongoing project established in 2021 to
accelerate the use of AM in the UK defence industry,
the TCT Awards, and Print City MMU’s live design
competition in which Manchester Metropolitan
University’s MSc students were challenged to optimise
part designs to exhibit strength and high performance
in a repeatable manner.