The National Manufacturing Summit 2026 returned to the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), Coventry, for the sixth year to power progress in UK manufacturing. Here, MEPCA provides insights from this flagship event designed by industry for industry.
The sixth edition of the National Manufacturing Summit exceeded expectations in every respect, attracting over 550 onsite and over 5,000 virtual attendees, along with 33 exhibitors, sponsors and partners. The auditorium was packed, as were the workshops and breakout sessions, and nearly every available space was a buzz as manufacturing leaders converged to network and collaborate.
It is hard to imagine a more appropriate location for a summit dedicated to the progress of UK manufacturing than the MTC, a place where manufacturing innovation is pioneered, and the engineers and manufacturers of tomorrow are trained.
The exhibitors and sponsors of the event demonstrated the diversity of the manufacturing supply chain in a microcosm, helping to establish the business-to-business connections that are so crucial to the sector, providing access to finance, skills and compliance support.
Among those improving industry skills were PAIR, a startup founded to address the growing adoption gap between what AI tools are capable of and their use. By helping manufacturers get value from generative AI, it improves productivity and job fulfilment. “We are called PAIR because we think the future is one where we pair the best of human intelligence with the best of artificial intelligence,” said James Kuht, PAIR’s CEO.
Industry insights
There were 44 industry-leading speakers over the course of the day. The morning sessions were a pulse-check of UK manufacturing, providing data-driven analysis and real-world insights from businesses, ranging from SMEs to international enterprises. Later seminars and breakout sessions provided a more practical, hands-on approach to industry challenges.
In one notable afternoon session, Agility Cyber’s CEO, Jonathan Sword, delivered a fresh perspective on cybersecurity, intended to cut through the bombardment of cybersecurity products available on the market.
He held that retrospective improvement, such as compliance training and security tools, are an inefficient approach to the challenge of cybersecurity. The current vendor-led narrative places busy people at fault by clicking on a link, providing training and tools and compliance to reduce that risk, whereas a technical solution will prevent nefarious links presenting a risk to the system at all.
To illustrate this, he looked at cybersecurity attack trees, looking at a business from the perspective of a “threat actor” attempting to get access to the system.
Vendors, he said, provide a solution to the “tributaries” of the attack tree. As these are highly variable, it is more effective to focus on the point where these threats converge to deploy a technical solution, rendering any attack futile. With this approach, he insisted, companies can “reverse the equity of power” held over companies by threat actors.
Standing room only
Speaking with our editor after the summit, Mike Wilson, Chief Automation Officer at the MTC shared his experiences. Alongside Adam Vicary, Chief Executive of Castings PLC, he delivered an instructive breakout session on the benefits robotics adoption. There had been a “big buzz” around the session, he recalled, with 60 plus people in the room and people standing outside. In particular, he was overwhelmed by how receptive and engaged the audience were, which was illustrated by the session running over and the organisers stepping in to move everyone on. For him, this level of engagement was also a good indicator of the success of the event as a whole.
On how the wider impact of the event can be measured, Mike Wilson explained that in addition to the “obvious, immediate measures,” of attendance and participation, the MTC also look at both the increases in number of robots – short-term and long-term – and the individual stories of businesses that have purchased robots as a consequence of speaking with them.
One such success story is Adam Vicary, Castings PLC, who prior to engaging with Mike Wilson (in his prior role at ABB) had not employed a single robot; he now has 70 and is an advocate for robotic automation in manufacturing.
Driving the future
Towards the end of the summit, the main auditorium held an energetic, future-focused panel discussion. Panellists included Dr Nandini Chakravorti, Director of Digital Engineering, MTC, Jennifer Griffith, Net Zero Skills Project Lead at NMIS and Rob Harvey, Head of Production Systems, Rolls-Royce. Topics included AI and data-driven solutions, which panellists agreed were being slowed down by data siloing, as well manufacturers not recognising the value of their data, something which is so crucial to both digitalisation and automation.
Driven by questions from the audience, the panel also addressed supply chain vulnerabilities, with key takeaways including the agility in component production brought by additive manufacturing, the benefit of onshoring on energy efficiency and sustainability, particularly in the food & beverage sector, along with the broader strategic importance of the UK’s Net Zero efforts in reducing operational cost and waste.
This lively discussion culminated with a focus on the skills gap and specifically how to prepare manufacturers and engineers for the skills they will need for tomorrow, in such a swiftly evolving sector.
Diverse challenges create diverse solutions
Arguably the most inspiring story of the afternoon was delivered by Mike Scudamore, Team Principal at Team BRIT, an F1 racing team with a difference. Team BRIT’s mission is to provide technology-enabled equity to enable people with a range of disabilities to compete in F1, a sport for which there is no paralympic equivalent.
The team’s drivers include amputees and those with neurological and psychological conditions, and each disadvantage presents a new engineering challenge for the team to solve. As Mike Scudamore explained, the rudimentary adaptions made to road vehicles for disabled people are fine for general use, but are not designed to handle a hairpin turn at 100 miles an hour. This requires innovative solutions to enable each individual to compete in F1, while of course mitigating any additional weight to the vehicle.
The systems created by Team BRIT to meet these challenges are no doubt patentable and would have a wider commercial applicability, but while the team sell a handful of the systems year, Mike Scudamore insisted that it will remain “open source” to enable as many disabled people around the world to get into racing as possible.
Outside of this differing commercial approach, there many lessons for the industry and parallels to draw to agile manufacturing.
“We’ve got a problem in the morning, something’s designed in the afternoon, it’s 3D printed overnight, it’s on the car by the following day. That’s the sort of lead time we’re working to,” he explained.
Racing is defined by immovable deadlines. Unlike in engineering or software development, there can be no project slip; the race starts when it starts. It served as a potent reminder of what can be achieved when deadlines are treated as immovable from the project outset. Mike Scudamore’s concluding advice for manufacturers was: be innovative, be fast paced.
