Smarter, bigger, better: Manufacturing & Engineering Week rebrands for 2024
08 November 2023
Following the success of this year’s event, Manufacturing & Engineering Week has rebranded to become Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week, reflecting its ambition to help manufacturers shape the future of industry with new technologies, tools and solutions.
Commenting on the change, 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, to name a few.
“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 for Drives & Controls at Nineteen Group, said of the addition, “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 perfectly. In addition, Air-Tech and Fluid Power & Systems will also be returning, taking place in Hall 5 of the NEC.
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 those in the industrial sector 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 for which they work.
Peter Jones, CEO of Nineteen Group, commented on the launch of Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week 2024 saying, “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.”
Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week will run from the 3-7 June 2024, with Drives & Controls opening from 4-6 of June (three days days) in Hall 5 at the NEC in Birmingham and the other live events taking place on 5th and 6th June only (2 days) in Hall 4 just next door.
Other exhibitions are also taking place at the NEC during the week, run by other event organisers. These include the UK Garage & Bodyshop event run by Messe Frankfurt; Med-Tech Innovation Expo and TCT 3Sixty from Rapid News Group; Subcon from the Mark Allen Group. A single visitor registration to Smart Manufacturing & Engineering Week provides access to all the events.
Registration will open soon, but in the meantime, for more information, visit: www.mandeweek.co.uk.