EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

Manufacturing collective launches MANifesto

Eight manufacturing SMEs have responded to the lack of a coherent industrial strategy in the UK by launching their own MANifesto.The Manufacturing Assembly Network (MAN), which comprises of seven subcontract manufacturers and an engineering design agency, has responded to the Government’s faltering strategic vision for industry by delivering its own blueprint for making the country globally competitive.

Bosses believe the four pillars of ‘Investment’, ‘People’, ‘International Trade’ and ‘Sustainability & Net Zero’ should lead the overarching approach and form the guiding principles for individual businesses inside the collective.MAN is now calling on the powers in Whitehall to facilitate growth by providing tailored support and removing some of the bureaucratic barriers currently in place.
For further informationwww.bit.ly/3B0gVdC

Order book growth prompts new division

Francis Brown Engineering has established a dedicated pressure vessels division to reflect growing demand for its specialist fabrication capabilities.The Stockton-on-Tees company has seen an increase in orders for bespoke pressure vessels across multiple sectors, ranging from chemicals and oil and gas, to hydrogen storage. The business recently delivered a vertical column pressure vessel for a major client in the oil and gas industry that measured 20 m in length and weighed over 15 tonnes.

CEO Jamie Brown says: “We’ve built upon our extensive fabrication and welding capabilities to develop a strong track record for delivery of storage pressure vessels to newly emerging hydrogen industries across the UK and Europe. As a result, we’ve established a dedicated pressure vessels division to reflect their growing importance to the business as we further strengthen our position in these new and existing sectors.”
For further information www.francisbrown.co.uk

Driving productivity with generative AI

Siemens and Microsoft are harnessing the collaborative power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to help industrial companies drive innovation and efficiency across the design, engineering, manufacturing and operational lifecycle of products. To enhance cross-functional collaboration, the companies are integrating Siemens Teamcenter software for product lifecycle management (PLM) with Microsoft’s collaboration platform Teams and the language models in Azure OpenAI Service.

At theHannover Messe exhibition in Germany last month the two technology leaders demonstrated how generative AI can enhance factory automation and operations through AI-powered software development, problem reporting and visual quality inspection.Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud + AI at Microsoft, says: “With Siemens, we are bringing the power of AI to more industrial organisations, enabling them to simplify workflows, overcome silos and collaborate in more inclusive ways to accelerate customer-centric innovation.”
For further information www.microsoft.com www.siemens.com

Universal Robots announces Denali partnership

Universal Robots (UR), a producer of collaborative robots (cobots),is entering a new partnership with Denali Advanced Integration, a services and global technology integrator. Denali, which is UR’s biggest Certified Solution Partner (CSP), will now apply its integration expertise and market reach to bring UR’s cobot technology to major businesses across the globe as part of its new Automation-As-A-Service (AaaS) portfolio. This will offer large-scale companies end-to-end integration and service support, corresponding with growing interest from large businesses in cobot automation.
For further information www.universal-robots.com

Strong 2022 results for Kuka

Robot manufacturer Kuka won more orders than ever before initslatest financial year: at €4.46billion, the company achieved the highest order intake in its history, an increase of 25.1% compared with the previous year. Demand for Kuka products and solutions was particularly high in China. However, customers in the US also invested heavily in Kuka systems, especially for the production of e-vehicles. Sales were 18.6% higher than in the previous year (2021), while in the first three months of the current financial year, Kuka again exceeded the results of the same period last year across all divisions.
For further information www.kuka.com