Increasing productivity in manufacturing

Digitalisation holds great potential for the European manufacturing industry. Huge amounts of data are created with this – so what to do with them?

The intelligent use of data in production is increasingly coming to the fore when it comes to smart workflows and operational excellence, data-driven supply chain strategies for resilience and resource efficiency or reducing downtimes through predictive analytics.

The event “Smart data in manufacturing” gave an overview of the perspective of established industry companies complemented by use case presentations of young niche experts specialised in smart data management for productivity and efficient operations in manufacturing.

We asked the speakers for their thoughts, learnings and key take-aways from the event and the ensuing lively conversations.

Asha-Maria Sharma, German Trade and Invest: “I was impressed by the solutions the participants presented and by the fact that almost all of the start-ups already have corporate customers. On a more personal note, it was outstanding to see that half of the companies have female founders or CEOs.”

Uwe Gäbler, Head of Infineon Development Center for Automotive Electronics and Artificial Intelligence Dresden, spoke about opportunities and prospects of artificial intelligence from the perspective of a chipmaker. He sees semiconductors as the link between the real and the digital world which enable value creation with AI. “In the UK there are really interesting opportunties for partnerships. So far, this region has not really been on my radar.”

Ann LoCicero, smartFAB: “Manufacturing companies are increasingly interested in effectively using data to reduce production losses.”

Dr Mauro Arruda, smartia: “I gained a better understanding of Industry 4.0 opportunities and market structure in Germany. Meeting the EIT Manufacturing team, I learned about their scale-up programme which could be a very interesting route to market in Germany. And last, but not least, I enjoyed meeting other start-ups and sharing industry experiences.”

Jane Kirz, UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT): “My key take away from the event would be the great opportunity these events provide for start-ups to network and share ideas with corporates, but also between themselves.”

Marek Kotelnicki, VIGO Ventures: “It felt great to be one of the peas in the pod between software and hardware, and here a quote from Alan Kay comes to my mind: ‘People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.’”

Ruth Kearney, Nightingale HQ: “Doing business across Europe just got easier with EIT Manufacturing.”

Geoff Walker, Faraday Predictive: “I learned that there is a large number of organisations within Germany that can be helpful in developing business – and that the German Trade and Investment (GTAI) organisation can help navigate them. The event showed that there are a number of interesting, dynamic organisations using Artificial Intelligence techniques to deliver real value to a wide range of different business problems in a wide range of different industries.”

Anna Weirauch, ai-omatic: “In the majority of cases, conversations in person are more valuable than digital meetings.”

Niall Sullivan, Senseye: “My main takeaway is how clear it is that predictive maintenance is now very much in the mainstream and at the forefront of manufacturers’ plans to innovate around Industry 4.0.”

William Noordink, corrosionRADAR: “You don’t need to be a large multinational to come up with most intelligent idea.”

Samira Nabatian, IUNA: “Throughout Europe, manufacturing and processing companies, especially SMEs, still have great potential for automation in their production. Thanks to AI, we can often solve complex tasks much more easily today than we could just a few years ago. The best way to communicate this to people is in most cases a direct dialog and exchange. Many thanks to EIT Manufacturing for making this kind of exchange happen.