Professor Dr.-Ing. habil. Dipl.-Inform. Jörn Mehnen is Director of Research at the Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management (DMEM) at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. Professor Mehnen is working in the field of Industry 4.0 and Digital Manufacturing including Industrial Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and Cloud Manufacturing, Through-Life Engineering, Additive Manufacturing and Optimisation. He published extensively more than 120 articles in peer reviewed journals, conferences and books. He was Deputy Director of the EPSRC Centre for Through-Life Engineering Services at Cranfield University. Professor Mehnen worked on many national and international research projects in collaboration with major industry partners. He graduated with a PhD (Dr.-Ing.) from Technical University of Dortmund in Germany in Engineering, got awarded a Habilitation (habil.) and holds the position of a Privatdozent at TU Dortmund (Priv.-Doz.).

The philosophy of Industry 4.0 requires a fundamental rethinking in manufacturing. Advanced approaches developed in the digital world have empowered new start-up companies to grow at exponential scales. Collecting, managing, processing, sharing and distributing the right information efficiently is crucial for this grows. Reliable data is the “life-blood” of digital decision making in Digital Manufacturing. Industry 4.0 offers many advanced tools from Artificial Intelligence to Additive Manufacturing that, when understood, combined and applied the right way, can have game changing effects. This talk highlights the challenges and opportunities of the power of data in Digital Manufacturing.