Innovation & Management in Practice (IMPact): GrowIn 4.0’ workshop
Professor Chris Ivory and the Research and Enterprise Team at the Anglia Ruskin School of Business and Law, organised a two day workshop to identify how we, as a academics and support agencies in the North Sea region, can best help small and medium sized engineering enterprises make the adoption digital technology easier. The workshop involved 30 participants from five countries and 14 organisations as part of the University’s ‘GrowIn 4.0’ Interreg project. Digital technology like, for example, smart sensors embedded in production processes, components and products allows engineering firms to innovate products faster and dramatically save costs through closer and automatic monitoring.
Chris said ‘our desk research has identified, however, that SME’s lack confidence in their own ability to select and implement the technology solutions’.
The workshop participants came up with a three-step support approach to help with this - starting with needs assessment, then identifying appropriate business and investment decision support tools and then assessing where new skills and training that might be needed.
Chris said ‘our aim is both to help SME’s reach their own business goals and to give them the confidence to raise their ambitions’.
One of the outputs of the project will be training hand-book Containing all of the tools we have identified and developed as part of the project.
For more information please get in touch with Chris:
chris.ivory@anglia.ac.uk