Digital World 2050

Connected Everything, 2023

Manufacturing in 2050 will look profoundly different to today. The products and services we consume, how they get made, delivered and reused across all sectors will need to be delivered by a production system or value chain that delivers at net zero or better.

Digital technology and its successful development and implementation will help enable that and also allow us to reimagine the future of work within engineering and manufacturing. This reimagined value chain has to function effectively in disrupted times offering resilience in product delivery and to the local economies, engaging local communities and inspiring the next generation to innovate further.

Over the past six years, the Connected Everything Network has engaged with many different experts from a range of backgrounds. These experts have brought different academic, technical and industrial perspectives to some of the challenges that we face as we aim to increase the extent to which we embed digital technologies in the manufacturing life cycle, and the impact of those technologies on efficiency and productivity.

The 2050 report has brought together these views and framed them across a series of themes which take a holistic approach. One of the original goals of the Connected Everything approach was to bring new voices and insights into the debates and challenges facing the development and implementation of digital manufacturing technologies; this report presents the outputs of discussions between those new voices and perspectives and those with extended valuable experience in the reality of implementing digital manufacturing technologies in a range of sectors and settings.

This report compellingly outlines the challenges, the UK strengths and the opportunities for the UK in leading during this transformation and how we can bring together the manufacturing, academic and technology strengths to deliver UK prosperity that has a global impact. The coming together of many across those areas to feed into this reports and the alignment of ideas is the template for how we can accelerate towards that net zero manufacturing future.

The introductory pages to the report can be downloaded via the link below and the full report is available on the Connected Everything website.