The last Ditchley conference of 2016 was "21st century manufacturing, the jobs, workers and technology for a new era", hosted in partnership with the Canadian Ditchley Foundation.
The major lesson learned was that societies needed to be prepared for the technological revolution – by no means a new phenomenon, but gathering pace – that will dramatically change the world of work. Workforces need to be armed with the new skills to operate in the increasingly automated environment. This will require coordination between government, industry and educators: crucially, we need to educate our young people that manufacturing and engineering (of every kind) are high value/high status fields of employment.
A number of prescriptions are recorded in the Director's summary of the discussion which can be read in full here.
21st century manufacturing
General