Smart Manufacturing Systems Ulster University

Overview

The Smart Manufacturing Systems course from Ulster University  provides an opportunity for the support of transfer of skills and expertise to company staff. It will be a location for them to re-train their staff in IDTs and become enabled, competent and confident in IDTs.

The vast majority of industrial and commercial organisations in N. Ireland are substantially under-prepared for the challenges presented by these advances in technology and will need significant support to develop the capability and capacity to survive, compete internationally with innovative products while extracting greatly increased efficiencies from their processes. Smart Manufacturing Systemsdraws on each of these 5 key enablers to provide a platform for development where intelligent factories become the norm with connectivity data and IDTs at the heart of the workplace.

Career and Opportunities

Smart Manufacturing is a rapidly developing field of study within both academia and industry. 

The Smart Manufacturing Systems aims to prepare students for a successful career as a modern manufacturing engineer where Industry 4.0 machine-to-machine (M2M) communication (products talk to machines) is producing large amounts of collected data, where analytics now plays a key role in understanding and modelling process improvements, alongside competitive demands within a global business context. Hence, there is a need for skills in advanced manufacturing processes, industrial robotics, intelligent automation, factory modelling and simulation, zero defect manufacturing with data analytics, embedded sensing and M2M, and commercial awareness. 

These types of skills are typically in high demand in manufacturing industries from plastics, semiconductor to construction, as the sectors moves to Industry 4.0.