Digital manufacturing today builds on highly advanced technologies and deals with the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution.

Digital manufacturing offers new potential for changing current, or introducing new, business models that are based on data and services (such as Power-by-the-Hour®)  It offers technologies that can turn both small or large enterprises into more competitive tech-driven companies (similar to Google, Facebook or AliPay); technologies that can improve agility of business to react on events through better intelligence – affecting the shop floor and the supply chain.

Areas of research include:

• Automation, control and instrumentation
• Cyber physical systems
• Digital manufacturing
• Factories of the future

Digital manufacturing helps close the loop from smart design for smart services and products through-life, as it links desgn, manufacture, use, maintenance and remanufacture through digital means.

Digital manufactuiring can revolutionise businesses dramatically - however, the technologies can also be phased into the business gradually to match-and-mix what suits the business best.