October 2019

| NEWS | www.rittal.c R XN Discover the Edge. Smart Solutions. Real Business. exhibition will showcase current products and solutions in industrial automation as well as trend-setting technologies of the future. Exhibition visitors will benefit from the wide range of products and services offered by national and international automation and digitalisation providers. Digitisation is having a major impact on the automation industry. Exhibitors will therefore present not only their solutions, but also various products and example applications for digital transformation at the event. IT providers are also increasingly represented at the SPS. The appeal is the strong emphasis on presenting the IT topics in cooperation with the automation companies. Topics such as big data, cloud technology, 5G and artificial intelligence are often presented jointly with automation providers on the basis of practical examples and demos. In addition, topic-related showcases and presentations at the exhibition forums help to illustrate digital transformation in the manufacturing industry. This year, the guided tours once again offer visitors from Germany and abroad the opportunity to visit exhibitors for a concise overview of specific topics, including machine learning and AI, product and machine simulation, industrial security in production, cloud ecosystems and predictive maintenance. The focus of the tours is on real use cases. For more information about the event, please visit: sps-exhibition.com The Manufacturing Technology Centre’s new innovation and knowledge hub for metal additive manufacturing, has been officially opened by The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Andrea Leadsom. In a significant advance for the UK, the new hub aims to lead research, development and collaboration on metal additive manufacturing, developing and testing ideas for taking the technology forward. The new hub, in the MTC’s Aerospace Research Centre on its Ansty Park, Coventry campus, will be formally launched to industry on October 15, and will also be the home of an online reference resource as well as a manufacturing facility. Its opening underscores progress in the £15 million MTC-led DRAMA (Digital Reconfigurable Additive Manufacturing facilities for Aerospace) project which encourages suppliers to the UK aerospace industry to adopt additive manufacturing. Supported by £11 million from BEIS’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, DRAMA has already engaged with more than 50 aerospace supply chain companies, and is still inviting applications for new projects. Unveiling a plaque in the new facility, Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom said: “I am delighted to launch this new facility. It is a great example of the strength of the UK’s capability in cutting edge manufacturing technology and has significant potential to help boost the competitiveness of UK companies and their supply chains. We’re investing £11 million to help build it and support aerospace suppliers to develop their manufacturing capability. The Manufacturing Technology Centre is making an important contribution to ensuring the UK remains a world leader in advanced manufacturing and I’m looking forward to seeing companies from across the sector make use of this facility.” The new hub includes a workshop and design, research and test facilities for additive manufacturing users and experts who can shape the technology, which is among the most important developments in advanced manufacturing for many years. The hub is among the first such centres in MTC’s aerospace innovation hub officially opened