Posted to News on 18th Jun 2024, 09:00
Smart Manufacturing And Engineering Week 2024 Celebrates Record Attendance
From robot dogs having dance offs with Terminator robots, to incredible guitar work from the winner of the Guitar Legends competition, to Richard Noble OBE's inexhaustible passion for involving young people in engineering and his next world record attempt - Smart Manufacturing and Engineering Week 2024 certainly delivered on its promise to be 'a festival of advanced manufacturing and engineering'.
Proof of the extraordinary success is that it drew a record number of 13,428 attendees, an increase of 30% on 2023.
"The buzz at Smart Manufacturing and Engineering Week was undeniable," said Grace Gilling, Managing Director of The Manufacturer, part of Nineteen Group. "I don't know if it was the live music at the entrance or the Graffiti Wall or the number of interactive features or maybe even the specially created Smart Hoperator beer, but the excitement created a perfect atmosphere in which to do business. Exhibitors were having fun; visitors were having fun and it all just...worked."
The event reaffirmed its status as the largest manufacturing and engineering technology show in the UK, with 470 exhibitors showcasing hundreds of products and solutions. Across eight free-to-attend solutions theatres, the event offered a dynamic mix of more than 150 insightful presentations on subjects such as digital transformation, IIoT and connectivity and industrial data, as well as practical workshops by the Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, and cutting-edge technology in the Made Smarter Innovation Showcase and the Start Up Zone.
Attendees looking for insight and knowledge-sharing were able to join the event's summits; the Manufacturing Digitalisation Summit focused on the opportunities and challenges of digitalising manufacturing processes. For those seeking deeper, specialist debates, the Industrial Data and AI Summit and the Automation and Robotics Accelerator Symposium provided forums for collaboration and discussion on niche topics within manufacturing.
Some of the fringe activities that took place included Enginuity's 10th Annual Skills Awards, celebrating excellence in skills development within engineering and manufacturing, and the Top 100 Awards that celebrates the heroes of the UK's manufacturing sector.
The core dates for the Smart Manufacturing and Engineering Week exhibitions in 2025 have been confirmed as the 4th and 5th of June. SM&E Week 2024 was once again a carbon neutral event with more trees being added to the Nineteen Group Forest to off-set the event's carbon footprint.
