MoIAT and EDGE to drive Industry 4.0 adoption and development in the UAE manufacturing sector
The Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology (MoIAT) and EDGE have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to establish the UAE’s first Industry 4.0 Enablement Centre aimed at promoting, enabling, and supporting the digital transformation and the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies across the country’s manufacturing sector.
The Industry 4.0 Enablement Centre will comprise various activities, including raising awareness around Industry 4.0 technologies and practices, upskilling manufacturers’ capabilities with specialised training curricula, demonstrating 4IR technology benefits, supporting the development of Industry 4.0 strategies, and creating a testbed and an open-access environment to pilot and co-develop innovative technologies.
As part of this partnership, EDGE will host a series of initiatives, training courses, and programs at the EDGE Learning & Innovation Factory (LIF) from September this year with the aim of accelerating technology adoption in the industrial sector, enhancing collaboration within the UAE’s advanced technology ecosystem, and enabling the co-creation and development of innovative solutions among industry players.
The EDGE LIF demonstrates digital manufacturing use cases to trainees. Each trainee will be able to participate in a simulation to explore how technology can empower production. In the simulation, they use an app to configure a small car, add a tagline, and track its production across the factory’s 4 islands in less than 7 minutes. The Smart and Lean Production training at EDGE LIF and is key to the Lean Digital curriculum. Lean Digital teaches how lead-times, quality and cost can be enhanced by the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies.
The simulation is conducted over three rounds. It covers traditional production processes, mechanisms for discovering manufacturing and productivity challenges, and implementation of technological solutions that support operations. This includes digital work instructions and a dashboard of key performance indicators, which can lead to more advanced technical solutions, integrate automated work tasks, and mechanisms. These solutions include logistics smartwatches and barcode scanning smart gloves.
His Excellency Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, commented: “Based on the vision of our leadership, the Ministry’s strategy is committed to supporting local manufacturers to adopt advanced technologies and 4IR solutions. Advanced technologies help to enhance efficiency, productivity, safety, and quality while reducing costs, optimising supply chains, and creating jobs. The agreement signed today is of great importance as it encourages technology adoption and will empower our industrial resilience, increase competitiveness, accelerate economic diversification and nurture a knowledge-based economy supported by advanced technology. Our partnership with EDGE is a testament to MoIAT’s objective to work with local industrial champions to encourage knowledge exchanges. We look forward to the continued upskilling of our national workforce and development of the national R&D ecosystem to achieve the objectives of our strategy.”
The EDGE Learning & Innovation Factory combines theory, technology, and practice under one roof to drive improvements and inspire an innovative approach to transform future processes and products. It provides trainees with experiential, gamified, and actionable learnings in line with the facility’s forward-looking, future-focused, and integrated approach.
