A new roadmap from the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVM Catapult) gives industry greater clarity and a shared direction.
Andrew Patterson – Chief Technologist for Products at NCC
By now, everyone in advanced engineering and manufacturing is familiar with the concept of digital transformation. Most can describe the technologies tipped to drive it: digital twins, agentic AI, model-based systems engineering.
But what's missing from many conversations – and a lot of the noise around digital transformation – is a confident sense of time, scale and sequence: what is going to happen, to what degree, and when.
For engineering and business leaders, that makes decision-making difficult: what should we prepare for, with what urgency, and to achieve what measurable benefit?
To replace speculation with clarity, today I launched the HVM Catapult Digital Engineering Roadmap at Advanced Engineering, alongside the Government's AI Champion for Advanced Manufacturing, Chris Dungey.
The roadmap gives UK industry a clear direction of travel, establishing common priorities and a collaborative baseline across critical technologies.
In this article, I break the journey down into three distinct time horizons – and describe what your teams should be doing today to prepare for each.
This is what digital transformation will really look and feel like in the years ahead.
The size of the prize
Every major industrial era has been defined by a step-change in technology and capability: mechanisation powered the first industrial revolution, electrification powered the second, and computer-enabled automation drove the third.
Our current era is defined by the convergence of digital technologies, physical processes and human expertise —with digital engineering as its cornerstone capability.
By 2040, we envision a nationally connected digital engineering ecosystem: where integrated data flows, intelligent automation, and lifecycle-aware design combine with a future-ready workforce. It will transform how we deliver products and systems.
The ambition is not merely to digitise existing processes, but to fundamentally reimagine the product lifecycle. To achieve this, our roadmap identifies five priority capabilities the UK must develop:
Model-Based Engineering Standards – FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data practices and agreed UK standards for adoption of Model-Based workflows.
Trusted AI for Engineering – Explainable and human-in-the-loop AI workflows.
Circularity by Design – Tools and data to support repair, reuse, life extension and end-of-life decisions.
Digital Assurance – New approaches to certification, assurance and regulatory engagement.
Testbeds and Validation Environments – Shared digital technology platforms where industry can innovate and demonstrate capability.
The nations that master these capabilities will innovate faster. They will develop more sustainable products. They will capture higher-value markets and create enduring, high-skilled jobs.
Businesses within those nations will iterate faster, collaborate seamlessly, and achieve more with their teams.
Phase 1: The foundations for change
The scale of ambition and opportunity explains why our roadmap projects it could take half a decade to build the right foundations for digital transformation. This includes standards, skills, data architectures, digital maturity, and shared innovation environments.
The good news is that genuine progress is already being made.
HVM Catapult's own Model-Based Enterprise (MBE) industrial user group is deeply engaged with stakeholders across industry on FAIR principles and adoption. Professor Chris Dungey is implementing the sector's new AI Adoption Plan underpinned by a simple national pathway in the Scan>Pilot>Scale approach. NCC and our partners across HVM Catapult are already building and trialling new testbeds and validation environments.
In this phase, your organisation's day-to-day engineering operations may not look so different from today. The priority for your teams should be two-fold:
Familiarise yourself with what’s coming next – NCC, HVM Catapult and Made Smarter have all produced guidance relevant to engineering and manufacturing teams.
Understand your organisation’s data – Do you capture data from your key processes and systems? Does that data align with FAIR principles?
Phase 2: Real change begins
In the next stage, we’ll see digital and AI solutions adopted and scaled across industry.
The roadmap highlights technologies such as digital twins, AI-enabled workflows and model-based practices as defining capabilities for this period.
You might hear about organisations using these already, but it's important to emphasise the difference between today’s isolated examples and the widespread implementation which will underpin the UK's digital transformation.
For example, here at NCC our teams have demonstrated the use of model-based workflows and AI-enhanced processes across specific design and manufacturing stages. Each model delivers genuine value, but the scope of each one is limited: to a specific process, to a specific organisation (NCC), and to the specific systems and software environments in which they're built.
We need to get to the opposite: a single model, owned by an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), drawing data from partners across the whole supply chain. One source of truth which changes in real-time and allows for concurrent development.
To prepare for this phase, organisations must ensure they're aligned with their supply chain partners. How, when and where data and models get shared is going to change. OEMs and supply chain partners must establish common data exchange formats, IP protections, and digital hand-off protocols well in advance of that change.
Today those conversations won’t be mature, but maintaining an open dialogue now can help all parties prepare.
Phase 3: Radical change is possible
In phase three UK engineering will realise genuine transformation, underpinned by the preparatory work done before it.
The roadmap highlights capabilities such as autonomous systems and full-lifecycle optimisation as defining this transformation. The difference in day-to-day engineering work could be radical.
Picture an engineer prescribing product goals and constraints, for AI agents to research, design, simulate and optimise solutions in real-time. The engineer sets the vision and validates solutions, while AI takes care of the 'doing'.
If it sounds far-fetched, we're already seeing glimpses of what this future looks like.
As part of Innovate UK's Agentic AI Pioneers Prize, we saw an AI model design a six-axis industrial robot in under one minute, compared with a typical two-week design process. The robot worked: successfully manufacturing test components without rework.
Humans-in-the-loop
Nothing in our roadmap advocates for removing human expertise from engineering and design processes.
In fact, the opposite is true. The roadmap specifically references the need for a future-ready, skilled workforce to oversee this transformation and direct the technologies and capabilities which will define it.
A distinction made at the start of this article is worth emphasising again: digital engineering is the cornerstone capability, but it is the convergence of digital tech, process and human expertise that will define the next industrial era.
It’s one part of an emerging definition of Industry 5.0 which prioritises human-centricity alongside sustainability and resilience. For the UK to maintain its position as a world leader in advanced engineering, we human engineers must be ready to drive and embrace change.
The HVM Catapult digital engineering roadmap provides us with a shared plan. Together with industry, we must now deliver it.
With thanks to the HVM Catapult digital engineering special purpose group:
Benjamin Bollans, MTC
Ben Hopper, NCC
Dan Cox, WMG
Dan Walton, MTC
Ercihan Kiraci, WMG
Gavin Hill, AMRC
Graeme McLaughlin, NMIS
Kieran Ciniewicz, MTC
Mark Taylor, CPI
Michael Canavan, NMIS
Omer Ozkirimli, MTC
Phil Tootill, AMRC