Q: You’ve got a bird’s-eye view on advanced manufacturing. What trends are you seeing?

A: The biggest one is the move beyond just focusing on the financial side of things. Historically, there's been a big focus on trying to save costs and be efficient. But there's a big drive at the moment to think about the sustainability of processes, and how companies can start to prepare to produce more sustainable products. A key part of that is the use of digital technologies. You need to know what your impact is to be able to do something about it. And digital systems help provide that information.

There's also a lot of work looking at how we reduce the impact of the materials we use. That could either be by introducing new materials, or it could be thinking about how we reduce the amount of material we’re using in a particular part. That's where technologies like additive manufacturing come in.

And, actually, all this helps with the bottom line as well. Because if you're using less materials, you're probably saving yourself some money.

Q: Looking a few years into the future, what trends should engineers keep an eye on?

A: At the moment, the rules around sustainability are quite open. We're really talking about intent rather than rules. But I think we’ll start to see more rules and legislation come in from a government level to incentivise companies to be more sustainable.

This will provide an opportunity for UK businesses, but also a challenge. We’ll need to be ahead of the competition. If we get it right, we'll see lots of what's being referred to as green-shoring. Work will come here because it's the most sustainable place to manufacture.

Q: What can the UK government, and the wider industry do to support these ambitions?

A: This isn't just a technological problem. We also need a supply chain that can provide the materials and components in suitable quantities to enable businesses to base themselves here. And those businesses need access to a skilled workforce. So we need to see those three things (technology, supply chain and skilled workers) being developed together.

There’s a danger that government focuses on the easy bit, which is just throwing money at the technology development and research. But, unless we also have the other two things, we're not going to see the effects we want. And it's likely that other countries will gain an advantage.

We’re very lucky in the UK. We've got some really highly-skilled engineers. But we're going to have to evolve those skills. We're going to have to acquire new skills. And we're going to have to develop companies, and new competencies within those companies.

 Q: Can you share one big challenge and one exciting opportunity for the advanced manufacturing sector?

A: The last couple of years have shown us that material supply is a big challenge. Whether that’s raw materials or the food that goes on the shelves in supermarkets. We must make sure we've got that suitable supply of material to let us do what we need to.

I think the greater focus on sustainability is actually a really good opportunity for the UK. The problems are difficult to solve, and they're going to require lots of thought and effort. But that's one of the areas that we've shown, time and time again, that we're really good at in this country.

Q: Additive manufacturing is living up to its promise, at last. Any thoughts?

A: One of the big challenges with any new technology is that the rules for designing components with it need to change as well. We've started to see lots of good demonstrations of what additive manufacturing can do. And we need to be able to certify to these strengths. 

Q: Last words go to the hottest topic at the moment: artificial intelligence. What impact do you think it will have on advanced manufacturing?

Artificial intelligence is a group of technologies. And many of them make our lives more efficient. We'll see more of that used in manufacturing environments. We don’t want to spend a lot of time searching for information that a digital system can provide to us straight away

The real challenge is fulfilling the intelligence part of artificial intelligence. At the moment, most systems still have to be trained. And they're being trained based on what we already understand about a particular solution. So they're not actually that intelligent. They're just able to recall information much quicker than we can.

The other thing we need to get our heads around is this: a lot of the time we humans aren't all that consistent with our thinking. We don't know why we make some of the decisions we make. Why we like the things we like. And if we're using an artificial intelligence system, we probably want it to behave, at least some of the time, like we would.

So I think we're at quite an interesting stage at the moment. But we're probably not fully at the stage where artificial intelligence is intelligent. Be that as it may, it's a very interesting area, and it’s advancing very quickly.