It was early on Wednesday 21st February that James Green and I met up in the Green Custard office and headed down to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) UK Manufacturing Day held at Amazon's London office, just up the road from Liverpool Street station.

We were exhibiting, showcasing the range of Industrial IoT solutions we offer manufacturers, plus a demo of our mini production line based on the classic Penguin-go-round. Around 10 partners were exhibiting plus AWS, some of whom we have worked with before.

The day consisted of a series of talks, panel discussions, and round tables, with breaks for networking and interaction with the exhibits. We were fortunate to meet a number of existing customers, and potential new customers, and to be able to put a real face to a number of the AWS team we had only met via email or video calls.

My takeaways from the discussions with customers were:

1. People seem more willing to invest in 2024 than they were in 2023. I think businesses realise that sustainability and costs go hand in hand and that a broad range of customers we spoke to had legacy equipment which would be costly to their businesses if there was unplanned downtime. Condition-based monitoring leading to predictive maintenance is a quick win for many.
2. The drive to invest seems to be driven by those at the bottom, or those at the top. We had several comments about middle management not willing to change how they do things. We have often observed that change only comes with consistent buy-in across the stakeholders in the business. Aligning stakeholders around some simple achievable goals, and then delivering on them quickly, can help steer the business down the path to change.
3. People do talk about Generative AI (Gen AI) a lot. There is no doubt Gen AI will impact businesses across many sectors, but it's important to have use cases which deliver value - which can be said about any technology investment in a business. An example use case which came up in conversation was supporting plant maintenance engineers with insights into both equipment data and maintenance/equipment guides, providing a more holistic approach to supporting maintenance.

The day ended with a networking session when we spent a good amount of time talking with the AWS team about helping manufacturers build connected industrial products, in the most part to drive additional revenue from their customers. Overall the day was great fun, good to meet a diverse range of people supporting or doing manufacturing, and we would be happy to exhibit if these become a regular fixture. So thank you to Fiona Armada for organising and the AWS IoT and Manufacturing teams for your support on the day.