Industria

Autodesk is modernising traditional processes Small Heath has seen some changes over the decades. Its location on the main road linking Coventry and Birmingham made it a key site for industry; and until the early 1970s it was the home of BSA, churning out at various times rifles, handguns, bicycles, motorbikes, cars and taxis. Television viewers will know it as the home base of the fearsome Peaky Blinders gang, whose non-illegal interests include car building and the metals trade, and a place where foundries belch smoke and flames. With changing times come changing fortunes, and much of the old BSA...

Why manufacturers must rise to the cyber-security challenge By Prof Raj Roy The defence secretary’s recent warnings of increased cyber-warfare from nation states and other actors, determined to threaten the UK’s infrastructure, must be a wake-up call to the engineering profession. As we rightly reap the benefits of advanced technological interconnectivity and the rise of Industry 4.0, we must also be vigilant to the dangers that we face now and in the future. Cybersecurity can no longer be an optional extra for engineers; it must be a core competence of the profession. When you think of warfare, what do you...

Snoop Dogg’s venture firm just closed its debut fund with $45 million Snoop Dogg, the rapper, entertainer and businessman, can claim another small victory in a long string of career highlights. The venture firm that he co-founded a couple of years ago, Casa Verde Capital, has closed its debut fund with $45 million. The money was raised in earnest last year, says managing partner Karan Wadhera, an alum of both Goldman Sachs and Nomura Securities who joined the outfit in the summer of 2016 to take over the process of securing capital — as well as investing it along with fellow...

Robot Workers: Will Engineering Jobs Be Automated? Complex disciplines, like mechanical engineering, are safe from robot workers, for now. There have been some worrying headlines recently that warn us of the rise of robot workers and that millions of jobs will be lost to automation and non-human operators over the coming years. While much of these could be written off as scare stories, it does seem that as robot workers become more sophisticated, we can expect them to take over some of the roles that have been carried out by people. This brings us to the <engineering industry. Clearly given...

Why the Automation Boom Could Be Followed by a Bust You may not be sharing your office with a robot yet, but the next wave of automation has begun. Humanoid service robots, machine learning algorithms and autonomous logistics will replace millions of service workers in the coming decade. Experts are rushing to forecast the likely impact on jobs. But most projections overlook two powerful forces that will combine with automation to reshape the global economy by 2030: rapidly aging populations and rising inequality. The collision of these three forces sets the stage for a 10- to 15-year economic boom followed...