Following a successful event in 2023 Manufacturing & Engineering Week continues to evolve, and will become Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week in 2024. The small adjustment in the name has been made to reflect the forward-looking nature of the event and puts a focus on the new technologies, tools and solutions driving the sector forward. 

Verity Noon, marketing director at Nineteen Group, said: “The week is all about cutting-edge innovations in hardware and software and solutions to the current challenges being faced around industry 4.0, sustainability and supply chain shortages. Manufacturers and engineers are constantly looking for ways to work ‘smarter’, to become more efficient, stay ahead of the competitive curve and explore new business models and practices and Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week will help them do just that.

With more than 10,000 manufacturers, designers, engineers and maintenance professionals attending in 2023 the event will expand way beyond 450 exhibitors with the addition of Drives & Controls in Hall 5. Laura Parris, event director at Nineteen Group said: “Drives & Controls is one of the great brand names in the UK industrial exhibitions sector. It has such a long history from the days when it overflowed from its original home in Telford to now where it finds its natural place as part of Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week”.

With technology businesses such as Weidmuller, Pilz, Sigmatek and Festo, confirmed for Drives & Controls the event complements the other exhibitions, Design & Engineering Expo, Smart Factory Expo and Maintec. In addition, Air-Tech and Fluid Power & Systems will also be returning, with the event taking place in Hall 5 of the NEC.

Furthermore, a host of other live events will be taking place during Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week 2024. Senior manufacturing leaders will be able to attend the Manufacturing Digitalisation Summit and the Director’s Forum alongside the Industrial Data Summit and the Manufacturing Automation and Robotics Summit. The Manufacturer Top 100 Award ceremony which celebrates the heroes of UK manufacturing and recognises their contribution to the sector will also be held during the week.

Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week has the support of many of the high profile organisations, institutions and trade bodies representing the UK’s industrial and manufacturing sector such as the MTC, GAMBICA, Make UK and Engineering UK. Members of these organisations will join the advisory council to assist in curating the educational and thought leadership programme taking place across the seven Solution Theatres.

Sustainability is not only high on the agenda of manufacturers but also of the event organisers themselves. The event will once again be carbon neutral in 2024 with more than 20,000 trees planted in the Nineteen Group Forest since 2022. The event’s charity partner is again Engineers Without Borders UK, which is ensuring that globally responsible engineering is embedded within the thinking of both engineers and the businesses they work for.

Nineteen Group CEO Peter Jones said: “In 2023 we gave our team licence to put on an event which was different to how industrial exhibitions and conferences had been staged in the past. The festival feeling which they created will be built on in 2024 and the addition of Drives & Controls in Hall 5 means we must think even bigger as there are just simply more people to engage and entertain.”

Grace Gilling, managing director of The Manufacturer, added: “Evolving the name for 2024 is something we are delighted about. Being smart in manufacturing encompasses not only technology but also being open to the practices and ideas of your peers and fellow manufacturers. This bringing together and sharing of best practice has always been a feature of what we have done in Smart Factory Expo but to see that thinking taken out across the whole show is absolutely the right thing to do. Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week is a recognition that we are all in this together as an industrial community.”

Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week will run from the 3-7 June 2024 with Drives & Controls opening from 4-6 June in Hall 5 at the NEC in Birmingham and the other live events taking place in Hall 4 just next door on 5-6 June. Other exhibitions are also taking place at the NEC during the week run by other event organisers, and these include: the UK Garage & Bodyshop event run by Messe Frankfurt; Med-Tech Innovation Expo and TCT 3Sixty from Rapid News Group; and Subcon run by the Mark Allen Group. A single visitor registration to Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week provides access to all the events.

For more information visit the website: here.