Companies join force to get manufactures fit for industrial revolution

This new industrial age is widely expected to open up new opportunities, as well as challenges, for UK manufacturing. As a result, collaboration between the technology and manufacturing sectors will gain in strategic importance, particularly in driving productivity, innovation and growth. 

Critical to this is identifying manufacturers’ experience with and understanding of 4IR, what they want to achieve for their business and how they think digitisation and new technologies will support them.

The collaboration will explore these themes. It will kick off with a series of focus groups with manufacturers around the UK and will culminate in an Executive Report that will help industry leaders to identify the key barriers, enablers and drivers of 4IR.

Above all, however, it will provide practical guidance on how manufacturers can adapt and implement new technologies in a way that suits their individual businesses.

Terry Scuoler, Chief Executive of EEF, said that this collaboration is an important step forward in providing the sector with thought leadership and practical support and guidance ahead of the biggest industrial transformation of our time. “It is vital that British companies are able to fully realise the opportunities and stay at the forefront of 4IR. This will require increasing levels of collaboration between our two sectors, so I am delighted that Oracle will help us engage and inform manufacturers on this crucial theme.”

The British manufacturing industry has always kept up with the pace of innovation, but the advent of the fourth industrial revolution marks one of the biggest technology-driven shifts in modern times commented Mark Newton, VP of Applications at Oracle UK. “Working together with EEF, we seek to provide manufacturers with both the information and practical paths they will need to successfully navigate the changing technology landscape. This represents a significant opportunity for manufacturers to transform their operations and harness the benefits of digital cloud technologies in both the UK and in global marketplaces.”