Are you running a UK manufacturing business and looking to embark on a digital transformation journey? If so, this free whitepaper is the perfect place to start.
Aimed at ambitious SMEs it acts as a guide, explaining the concepts of digitisation, digitalisation, digital transformation, and continuous improvement.
Made Smarter help manufacturers better understand and navigate current and future trends and make the case for how industrial digital technologies can solve problems and create growth opportunities.
This whitepaper explains the process of how we support SME manufacturers with digital transformation through grant funding and skills and leadership training programmes. It also showcases some of the hundreds of businesses who have benefitted from our intervention across the country.
Finally, hear from Made Smarter partner organisations such as Make UK, the Centre for People-Led Digitalisation (PLD) and InterAct on how they are working with Made Smarter towards a common goal and find links to the best resources available to get you started with digital transformation today.
The InterAct team kicked off a series of InterAct Global research missions with a visit to Singapore at the end of June 2024. InterAct Global is expansion of the project, designed to bring insights from international manufacturing and technological innovation to the UK sector. This visit enabled the team to engage with the manufacturers, technology providers and support organisations that have driven Singapore’s industrial development.
InterAct is hoping to create both local and global impact by exchanging knowledge with international players in the worldwide manufacturing ecosystem. These missions will help to better understand the competitive advantages of other countries, learn from them, and exchange best practices and processes. Providing these insights to UK businesses and policymakers, the project aims to tackle the future challenges of digital transformation across three key areas: ecosystems, economies, and workplaces.
Singapore represents an interesting case study for innovation, with a strong track record of economic growth and clearly defined strategies for industrial development. The nation’s role as a hub for trade, finance and technology in the region demonstrates the potential benefits of a unified approach. The team had the chance to explore this in more depth through visits to various organisations and companies including:
InterAct had the chance to expand upon these visits and discussions with a full day workshop hosted at the ARTC, bringing together staff from various additional businesses, including M, Mitsubishi, Edwards and Kowa Skymech.
This engaging session offered participants the chance to hear from both InterAct Co-directors and A*STAR staff as they discussed:
Building the next-gen workforce: Professor Jillian MacBryde’s session highlighting the importance of talent acquisition, development, and reskilling to bridge the skills gap.
Digital transformation: Professor Janet Godsell’s talk shed light on creating efficient digital ecosystems within supply chains and manufacturing landscapes.
AI-powered future: Dr. Haiyue Zhu showcased cutting-edge AI-powered smart robotics and the transformative potential of automation.
Singapore’s decarbonisation roadmap: Daren Tan outlined Singapore’s ambitious plans for decarbonisation, addressing environmental challenges head-on.
Attendees also contributed to an extended shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities for the manufacturing sector through two workshops built around the approaches of the InterAct Future of Work and Future of Digital Manufacturing Ecosystems teams.
We want to thank all of our generous hosts and partners for the success of this mission, and look forward to bringing more insights from our further global engagement activities.
Flexible working continues to increase, including for frontline workers, according to new data from the flexible working experts at social business Flexibility Works.
Did you know 67% of workers work flexibly, up from 61% last year and 46% before the pandemic? Now, 85% of workers either already work flexibly, or would like to.
The spotlight on flexible working is moving from hybrid for home workers to different types of flexibility that frontline workers, like those in manufacturing, can use to improve their work life balance and wellbeing, and deliver significant business benefits too.
You can download Flexibility Works’ Flex for Life 2024 report free to access:
Big picture flex: A short, need-to-know overview of what’s happening with flexible working in workplaces.
Business case for flexible working: Latest data evidence from employers and workers.
7 Steps to flex: Data-driven guidance on how to get flexible working right, including in frontline industries.
Business stories: Examples of where flexibility is working well, including McAllister Litho Glasgow’s print factory.
The report is based on data from Scottish employers, workers and unemployed adults looking for work and is Scotland’s most comprehensive analysis of flexible working. The findings are similar to UK-wide studies.
We hear a lot about the impact of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing, but it can be a complex and thorny issue to definitively explain. The term has become synonymous with smart manufacturing and the introduction of new digital technologies within the sector. Technologists talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), AI and machine learning, robotics or the power of cloud computing, but what does it all mean?
InterAct welcomed Dr. Olivér Kovács of the Ludovika University of Public Services, Budapest to an online session on 23rd May to share his insights on the 4th Industrial Revolution, how technological change can be accomplished and what key barriers to innovation remain.
Dr. Kovács is a Hungarian economist whose research embraces two fields:
Sustainable development through the lens of complexity science (including structural change, techno-economic paradigm shifts, Industry 4.0, state fiscal sustainability and the theoretical and empirical issues of fiscal policy and fiscal consolidations)
Innovation and innovation policy
He has been a member of public body of Hungarian Academy of Sciences since 2015 (Economics and Law Section of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Committee on World Economics and Development Studies), a member of the EuroMoney Expert Panel since 2010, and a member of the Darwin Club for Social Sciences which is equipped with the idea of applying evolutionary and complexity approaches to socio-economic phenomena.
Dr. Kovacs has published several books including:
Stability and Dynamism – Fundamentals of Innovative Fiscal Policy
Complexity Economics: Economic Governance, Science and Policy
Reversing the Great Suppression – Unleashing the Catalytic Public Sector for Innovation Dynamism
You can watch the full session on our YouTube channel.
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated significant difficulties in producing vital healthcare equipment, including ventilators. As the probability of another virus outbreak is expected to reach 27% in the next decade, it is crucial to develop manufacturing capabilities for initiating emergency production with greater speed, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. In this article, Nikolai Kazantsev from the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at the University of Cambridge suggests three steps to building pandemic preparedness. He draws on their recent study which offers insight into how UK manufacturers can navigate uncertain periods and contribute to critical public health initiatives.
Takeaways:
During a pandemic, it is necessary to reconfigure supply chains for emergency production.
Preparedness can be facilitated through three key steps:
Identifying products and components necessary to fulfil human needs.
Mapping manufacturing capabilities across supply chains for a potential response.
Developing an AI model to triage production options when the pandemic starts.
Government investment in pandemic preparedness will prevent delays, improve quality, and reduce recovery costs.
Preparing for future pandemics
The UK’s National Risk Register (2023) has identified a future pandemic as one of the five most probable catastrophic risks. Future pandemics could have critical negative impacts on human health, particularly cardiac and digestive health, with the potential to disrupt water and food systems. With the World Health Organization continuing to discuss the potential of unknown diseases of high contamination and mortality that can trigger a pandemic worldwide (a so-called ‘Disease X’), novel efforts are needed to prepare the manufacturing sector for future emergency production.
Up to now, most of the focus on pandemic preparedness has been on developing vaccine technology platforms for future virus strains and antibiotics for bacteria, especially considering the threat of antimicrobial resistance. However, what has been neglected is the local manufacturing capabilities to produce the quantity and variety of supplies required to deal with pandemic impacts. These capabilities should be able to meet potential production needs and guarantee that every patient in need of medical equipment can access it even during the peak of a crisis.
Emergency product designs must be safe to use and fit for purpose rather than complex and stylish. It is also essential to learn how to triage existing manufacturing capabilities at the outset of any pandemic outbreak, considering quality, lead times, and production scale-up costs. Moreover, emergency production planning should consider the risks of individual factory disruption and related component scarcity. The aim is to facilitate the development of supply chains capable of responding to the likely or quasi-certain emergence of demand and fluctuations therein for emergency products beyond those previously produced within supply chains.
Case study: Emergency consortia across supply chains
Ventilator production in the UK during COVID-19 has produced much knowledge of scaling up emergency equipment. In March 2020, the Cabinet Office identified the urgent need to manufacture healthcare ventilators to support critically ill patients’ breathing functions. Working in collaboration with clinicians and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, they developed the specifications for the Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator System. Because no single company could handle the emergency production on its own, this could have been overcome only through consortium effort. Emergency consortia are networks ‘wider’ than existing supply chains, which aggregate various capabilities to respond to unmet demand during disruptions that have a broad resonance, such as pandemics. Consortia are built around the required product components (e.g. a bill of materials for ventilator production) and often include companies that are non-traditional to the medical industry, such as aerospace and automotive manufacturers, technology providers, manufacturers, and third-party logistics firms.
For example, ‘Ventilator Challenge UK’ (VC UK) consortium was an example of a massive achievement that produced in 12 weeks over half of all the ventilators made available to the NHS during the pandemic. Focused on a desire to save lives, VC UK led the way in digital innovation, leveraging technology such as a digital twin of the production process, simulation of production facilities, and the use of “augmented reality” glasses to train 3,500 assembly workers, all while adhering to strict social distancing measures. From VC UK’s success, one still has much to learn about how to plan emergency production faster, better, and cheaper in the eventuality of another pandemic. For example, as there was no approved emergency product design, the first 29 days of the project were spent on redesigning the similar product (anaesthesia machine) to meet the functionality and safety scale-up needs of the ventilator specification. Moreover, this redesign faced multiple bottlenecks at the component level that limited the pace of emergency production scale-up and required continuous constraint optimisation.
Building a process of future pandemic preparedness
Based on the case study, three steps for manufacturers have been suggested: (1) identifying products and components necessary to fulfil human needs; (2) mapping UK manufacturing capabilities across supply chains to deploy capacity for these products; (3) developing a tool to triage options when the pandemic starts.
Production needs
According to the ‘Futures Wheel’toolkit, recommended by the Government Office for Science, a pandemic is an example of an event that creates cascading causal effects. While a pandemic can take various forms, the population will need similar functions, such as preventing contamination (the direct consequences of that risk), supporting primary care (‘second order’) or sustaining critical human functions within intensive care (‘third order’ consequences). For example, first, second and third-order consequences of the pandemic risk bring the following production needs:
Need to prevent contamination: PPE, water filters, sanitisers, and disinfectants.
Need to support primary care: vaccines and antibiotic medicine.
Need to support intensive care: ventilators and other ICU equipment.
Design and production specialists/ physicians and hospital experts should confirm what equipment and designs will be needed in any epidemic affecting patients’ vital functions. However, it is not enough simply to identify emergency products. These products must be certified as fit-for-purpose during a future pandemic, ensuring safety and quality, and adaptability in the expectation of potential shortages. Paradoxically, the better 1st order emergency production (for preventingcontamination), and 2nd order production (primary care), the less one would need (far more) complex 3rd order emergency production.
Moreover, building similar consequences after other risks from the National Risk Register and overlapping production needs can help prioritise production preparedness covering the greatest number of risks.
Manufacturing capabilities
A rapid roll-out of emergency products requires capabilities to deploy manufacturing capacity close to demand. Recent evidence from the US suggests that systematic investments in a combination of local inventories, manufacturing capacities, and capabilities produce the best response to the pandemic. Hence, the potential emergency products and their components should be mapped with the existing list of inventories, capacities, and manufacturing capabilities. That will facilitate simulations of demand for emergency equipment driven by potential pandemics and calculations of the number of emergency products manufactured to meet this (the lead time of ‘Ventilator Challenge UK’ production during COVID-19 was three months). For example, if there is a demand for 30,000 cardio stimulators – How quickly can this be satisfied locally, i.e., without reliance on imports? What would be the lead time/costs? The outcomes can be presented using technology such as the augmented reality platforms (industrial metaverse), to better interpret and explain these simulations.
To improve emergency production results, preparatory efforts must include identifying similar products and equipment, in addition to developing cross-disciplinary skills across large firms’ medical and engineering specialisms that may be reused for emergency production. Smaller firms must be supported in undergoing certification protocols to become regular suppliers to the NHS through their normal procurement framework.
Triage options
The future pandemic is expected to impact various parts of global supply chains, particularly in densely populated regions. Unfortunately, predicting which factories within supply chains will be disrupted and which components might become unavailable is impossible. However, under pandemic conditions, most companies, especially those in unaffected areas, are likely to be willing to help. As new manufacturing capabilities become available, efforts should focus on developing an adaptable AI model to align existing capabilities with risks and offer practical solutions to address supply chain bottlenecks for emergency production.
Such a model can base on the AI tools, which helps match production needs with manufacturing capabilities and can suggest new connections between components. By integrating manufacturing capabilities for emergency product, AI can help to infer real options across supply chains after the pandemic starts and arrange those considering costs, lead time, or carbon dioxide emission. For example, AI tool can suggest alternative inventories, factories, or even supply chains for the specified product design to deliver a scarce component, define the best response, and reduce the number of consortia working in parallel. For example, one can use stress testing, a method developed by David Simchi-Levi from the MIT Data Science Lab, to identify significant risks in a supply chain. This method helps find small but important component suppliers that may become bottlenecks in the supply chain when demand changes and it improves overall supply chain resilience.
Improving local manufacturing capabilities
While the COVID-19 experience suggests the rationale for running multiple teams in parallel to manage risks of non-delivery, an excessive number of teams working in parallel drains resources, overloads regulatory bodies, and increases recovery costs. As an alternative, the development of local manufacturing capabilities would make a significant difference in improving production resilience in the UK by enabling current supply chains to be reconfigured for human necessities. Moreover, with the advancement in AI, having an adaptable AI model capable of handling the triage at a state of readiness could be a powerful national asset. It can demonstrate the production readiness for potential demand shocks, such as the future pandemic. Policymakers might test it using real industrial intervention, increasing confidence that the population will be safe.
What practical steps should manufacturers take to prepare?
Focus on ‘known unknowns’; identify where you fit in to support emergency production.
Register participation in the local resilience forums (LRFs) and consider extending business strategy with risk and resilience.
Enable regular stress testing of the supply chain, considering potential bottlenecks to production growth.
The IfM is currently working on developing elastic manufacturing systems for highly regulated sectors such as aerospace, automotive, and food. These industries have very strict regulations, which limit production agility. The goal is to support the operation of UK manufacturers under continual demand fluctuations.
If you would like to collaborate with the team regarding pandemic preparedness, please contact Dr. Nikolai Kazantsev — nk622@cam.ac.uk or IfM Engage (ifm-enquiries@eng.cam.ac.uk).
Acknowledgement:The article is devoted to the 4th anniversary of ‘Ventilator Challenge UK’ consortium. The author acknowledges Dick Elsy, CBE, the former Chief Executive Officer of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVM Catapult), for feedback on the paper development, and the kind help and inspiration of Elizabeth Garnsey, Professor Emerita, IfM, University of Cambridge and the community of Clare Hall College. This work was supported by the UKRI Made Smarter Innovation Challenge and the Economic and Social Research Council via InterAct [Grant Reference ES/W007231/1]. Further, the first author acknowledges EPSRC funding, grant reference EP/T024429/1 via ‘Elastic Manufacturing systems – a platform for dynamic, resilient and cost-effective manufacturing services’.
A short video explaining the benefits of, and reasoning behind, the development of the PrOH Modelling methodology
PrOH Modelling is a type of soft systems methodology that is used to enquire into and improve complex systemic organizational process problems. As a soft systems methodology PrOH Modelling emphasizes understanding, definition, consensus building and action taking to solve problems. It is particularly useful in processes that are dependent on lots of human activity and decision making, have a high degree of subjectivity and have numerous different stakeholders with diverse backgrounds and opinions. PrOH Modelling is best used in an action research or intervention based context where a researcher is an active participant in organizational strategy and operations and is able to maintain an independent and objective perspective.
The PrOH Modelling approach has been successfully applied in numerous manufacturing contexts including:
Improving leanness and productivity in automotive manufacturing
The challenges of digitalizing an aerospace supply chain
Upscaling supply chains for the manufacture of electric vehicles
The prohmodeller.org website exists for the community of PrOH Modellers. This includes those who wish to use it for academic research projects such as masters dissertation or doctoral theses, those who wish to use it for change projects in their own organizations, or in a consulting capacity in other organizations. We also welcome users to develop the method and share new case study examples with the community.
This research was conducted by Professor Ben Clegg and Dr. Krishna Balthu (Aston University). This work was supported by the UKRI Made Smarter Innovation Challenge and the Economic and Social Research Council via InterAct [Grant Reference ES/W007231/1].
For further discussions or to propose potential applications/collaborations, please contact Ben Clegg.
On the 5th June, Innovate UK’s Made Smarter Innovation Showcase took place at Smart Factory Expo.
For the past four years, Made Smarter Innovation Alley at Smart Factory Expo has been a key platform for connecting technology companies with manufacturers, however this year it had a strong focus on celebrating the incredible achievement of organisations the industrial challenge (ISCF) has supported.
The event was an opportunity for the dynamic display of cutting-edge companies and academic organisations. The showcase highlighted success stories where organisations have leveraged the Challenge’s support to become leaders in areas like carbon abatement, resilience, and productivity and people running through the heart of the Showcase.
Smart Factory Expo saw over 13,000 attendees across the 2 days who explored over 200 exhibitions. Made Smarter Innovation hosted over 30 organisations, including InterAct, on their stand.
Made Smarter Innovation supported a number of engaging talks across the Smart Factory Expo theatres:
Made Smarter Innovation Challenge update from Deputy Challenge Director Dr. Ben Farmer (Innovate UK).
InterAct also had the chance to showcase the latest animated videos from the ‘Insights from History’ project, highlighting the important lessons for innovators that can be drawn from past industrial revolutions. You can watch the full series on our YouTube channel.
This research project examines the drivers, barriers, and performance outcomes of adopting industrial digital technologies (IDTs) in UK manufacturing firms. The findings outlined in the report and toolkit provide insights on the interventions that facilitate IDT adoption to enhance the performance of SME manufacturers exporting to international markets.
The project collected primary data from focus groups, interviews and a survey of 303 UK manufacturing SMEs currently exporting products. The outcomes from this primary research were used to develop an IDT adoption toolkit and decision-making model. This toolkit allows UK SME manufacturers to benchmark their level of IDT adoption against the industry standard, to identify which specific IDTs will have the greatest impact on improving their business performance across many indicators, and additionally can direct users to the digital solutions most relevant to their needs, thereby simplifying the process of IDT adoption.
Dr Hanh Pham, Dr Richard Hodgett and Prof Chee Yew Wong (University of Leeds). This work was supported by the UKRI Made Smarter Innovation Challenge and the Economic and Social Research Council via InterAct [Grant Reference ES/W007231/1].
For further discussions or to propose potential applications/collaborations, please contact Hanh Pham.
The Digital Change Toolkit is a freely available online resource which can help organisations to prepare, design, and evaluate the people and organisational aspects of digital change. It consists of three core components:
A six-stage change process with comprehensive guidelines for each stage
TheCResDA Tool (a questionnaire for assessing and evaluating employee attitudes)
TheSocio-Technical Scenarios Tool (a workshop based tool for assessing the current situation, designing future visions and developing action plans).
The Digital Change Toolkit offers:
Reliability: The Toolkit is grounded in research and established best practice guidelines, to provide credibility and effectiveness in supporting digital change.
Integration Flexibility: The Toolkit can be used on its own or in conjunction with other tools that focus on the design and implementation of new technologies or business models as part of digital change.
Versatile Application: The Toolkit is suitable for different change projects (both large and small) that involve technology or digital tools.
Scalability: The Toolkit can be used within a single organisation, across organisations, or across supply chains and is flexible and adaptable to suit the needs of the organisational context in which it is used.
The Digital Change Toolkit provides comprehensive guidelines to follow at all six-stages of a digital change process.
This research was conducted by Professor Carolyn Axtell, Dr. Vladislav Grozev, and Dr. Hui Zhang (University of Sheffield). This work was supported by the UKRI Made Smarter Innovation Challenge and the Economic and Social Research Council via InterAct [Grant Reference ES/W007231/1].
For further discussions or to propose potential applications/collaborations, please contact Vladislav Grozev.
In today’s globalised business world, there is a growing need for ethical supply chain practices. Manufacturing companies are facing complex challenges in modern production, and the importance of transparency and accountability has never been greater.
In this article, leading InterAct funded researchers from the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) at the University of Cambridge explore the potential of the industrial metaverse to help elevate ethical standards across supply chains. Examining the intersection of technology and ethics, the IfM team offers valuable insights into how manufacturers can navigate regulatory environments, build consumer trust, and promote positive social change.
In a world of globalised supply chains, manufacturing firms often lack awareness and control of their external operations, which can result in unintentional non-compliance with regulations. While forced labour generates $236 billion in illegal profits annually (International Labour Organization), European companies will soon have to show compliance with environmental and human rights standards within their supply chains.
In response to mounting concerns, Europe is poised to implement stringent measures to hold corporations accountable for their supply chain practices. The forthcoming ‘Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive’ heralds a new era of corporate responsibility. Large companies must conduct comprehensive audits of their supply chains, identifying and rectifying instances of forced labour and environmental degradation. Compliance will hinge on demonstrating adherence of the supply chain ecosystem to human rights and environmental standards.
The regulatory landscape is not confined to Europe alone. The UK, through initiatives like the Modern Slavery Act of 2005, has committed to fostering transparency within supply chains to eradicate all forms of worker exploitation. Moreover, further legislative reforms are on the horizon, promising a paradigm shift in corporate accountability.
How high is the risk of being penalised for suppliers’ actions?
Currently, the lack of production transparency allows non-ethical manufacturers to cut corners, giving them a competitive cost advantage that appeals to consumers. Unfortunately, many of these consumers are unaware of the wider context and end up supporting production that causes serious harm to societies and the planet.
Manufacturers can’t wait for new regulations about environmental and human rights standards in the UK. They must lead the development of digital tools for their production environments that delve into the existing supply chain data. This will demonstrate that their products are made with minimal adverse impact.
To enable this, it is crucial to make the production processes more transparent. One possible way to achieve this transparency is by leveraging augmented reality technologies, which can interpret and explain the existing complex data along supply chain echelons and incentivise the creation of new data sources.
So, in light of these developments, how can manufacturers ensure compliance with the new regulations and help uphold human rights and environmental protection?
The industrial metaverse: the foundation for a more transparent supply chain?
The Metaverse is a term used to describe the merging of the physical and digital worlds. It was first introduced by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash and later popularised by Mark Zuckerberg with Meta, a social network in extended reality.
The Industrial Metaverse comprises a series of ‘snapshots of realities’ around the data on sourcing, production, and delivery of components of a manufactured product, which can be explored in augmented reality. By exploring the upstream supply chain of components leading to the product, manufacturers can identify risks and take corrective action to comply with upcoming regulations.
Deploying industrial metaverse technology in practice requires:
access to data sources;
software (e.g. Unity Engine);
augmented reality headsets (e.g. Microsoft Hololens, Meta).
Although 3D virtual productions might look complex and expensive, new AI techniques such as Gaussian splatting can significantly reduce the cost of reality reproduction: a ‘reality snapshot’ can now be created by anyone using a smartphone. This means, UK manufacturers can demand the video screening of the production environment from potential suppliers at the procurement stage. This is where lower-tier suppliers are incentivised to agree to increase transparency in exchange for eligibility to sell products and services. Decentralised databases can be used to store this information at the supply chain level. It is important to note that creating fake snapshots could lead to legal repercussions and regulatory requirements.
Case study: contrasting opaque and transparent chocolate supply chains
Agriculture is almost uniquely resistant to technological change because of the remoteness/lack of oversight/scale of sites, and it is an area desperately in need of innovation. Leading chocolate brands have long been criticised for neglecting ethical standards in cocoa procurement, and many of the brands can’t effectively enact change since the market behind wholesalers is not transparent. This situation creates a high risk potential for social injustice and modern slavery, i.e. when the wholesaler purchasing prices make cocoa sales below the point of profitability, and farmers are forced to take children out of school to work on the farm.
Industrial metaverse, established along such supply chains, can spur transparency and influence to change the status quo. As European consumers are the primary market for cocoa harvesting, they have the market power to improve conditions for farmers in West Africa. To end forced labour and enable children to access education, requires new tools that support the transparency of cocoa supply chains for consumers.
While labour and environmental abuses exist in many supply chains, shocking 60% of cocoa-growing households in Ghana’s upstream cocoa supply chain are estimated to use child labour. Ensuring manfuacturers and consumers have access to accurate information about these unethical practices is therefore an urgent issue. A famous example of good practice is the ‘Bean to bar’ Tracker, along with QR codes, barcodes, biological markers of specific farms and fermentation processing locations, all of which can link chocolate bars to their potential origin. By comparing the known land size of a farm and the claimed cocoa harvest from that land, we can identify if cocoa of unknown origin is blended into the batch. While such tools are currently being used internally for supply chain traceability, adding an Industrial Metaverse component can open up and showcase the evidence to consumers. Consumers will be able to witness vivid experiences demonstrating the potential impact of supporting the chosen brand. This can showcase the positive changes to society (e.g. freeing children labouring to get an education) or highlight negative practices (e.g. the realities of environmental damage or modern slavery). Such evidence can build a strong identification that by purchasing ethical brands, consumers will be supporting the continuity of ethical production practices and local communities’ upstream supply chains.
Transforming production practices in the industrial metaverse
The Industrial Metaverse will increasingly move from merely representing reality, to shaping it. By shifting demand to ethical products, manufacturers will be able to increase their production scale, reducing the cost per unit and creating a greater impetus towards sustainability.
Instead of waiting for new regulations about environmental and human rights standards to be implemented in the UK, manufacturers must lead the development of similar immersive experience prototypes to confirm the ethics of their production environments. Going beyond the food production case, electronics and automotive manufacturers can validate their production processes by establishing an industrial metaverse around their products and demanding ‘reality snapshot’ data from their supply chains. It will propagate the impact across supply chains towards reaching multiple firms worldwide and make production more transparent for consumers. Not only will that reduce risks of non-compliance with upcoming regulations, but it will also anchor consumer demand with positive societal changes along supply chains. By doing so, manufacturers can champion Sustainable Development Goal 12: “Responsible Consumption and Production”.
What practical steps should manufacturers take from this?
Audit internal cost structures and visibility of operations along supply chains. Instead of aggregating costs at the wholesale level, manufacturers must enquire about the work conditions, energy sources, and potential carbon dioxide emissions through supply chain tiers.
Collaborate with extended reality solution providers to prototype Industrial Metaverse around their products and reveal production ethics along supply chains.
Analyse the integrated data and leverage alternative ways to reduce ethical risks. Communication throughout the industrial sector will help address industrial concerns about data privacy and confidentiality, leading to the industrial standard.
The IfM is currently working on developing a metaverse pilot for highly regulated sectors like aerospace, automotive, and food. These industries have very strict regulations that limit transparency. The goal is to enable a more transparent supply chain, which would contribute to the adherence of human rights and environmental protection. If you would like to collaborate with the team, contact Dr. Nikolai Kazantsev – nk622@cam.ac.uk or IfM Engage.
Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the UKRI Made Smarter Innovation Challenge and the Economic and Social Research Council via InterAct [Grant Reference ES/W007231/1]. We thank Prof Letizia Mortara, Dr Michael Rogerson and Alice Mumford for their feedback on this article.
