On June 3 and 4, 2026, SoftExpert participated as an exhibitor at Smart Manufacturing Week 2026, held at the NEC Birmingham. The event, organized by The Manufacturer, is considered the largest British festival of advanced manufacturing and engineering, and in this edition, it gathered companies and experts from various countries to discuss the paths of industrial production in the coming years.
SoftExpert occupied a booth in Hall 5 and presented its integrated platform, designed to connect quality, compliance, operations, and performance in a single environment. For those working in the industry who still face the challenge of isolated systems that do not communicate with each other, the proposal caught the attention of event attendees due to its practical comprehensiveness.
The event that took over Birmingham
Smart Manufacturing Week is not exactly a conventional trade show. Admission is free, and the focus is on content: there were over 170 sessions distributed across seven thematic stages, featuring discussions ranging from artificial intelligence applied to the factory floor to the transition to net zero and workforce challenges in the industrial sector.
The two days were intense. On Wednesday, the program kicked off at 9:30 AM and ran until 5:00 PM, with a reception at the end of the day. On Thursday, the closing took place at 4:00 PM. During this period, the NEC corridors bustled with manufacturers, technology providers, and industrial managers exchanging experiences directly at the booths and in the audiences of the theaters.
SoftExpert's proposal in the context of the event
In an event that discussed precisely the difficulty of integrating data, systems, and people within the same operation, SoftExpert arrived with a concrete answer: a platform that brings together quality management, regulatory compliance, operations control, and performance monitoring in a single environment.
This convergence makes sense for manufacturers who still operate with data fragmented across different departments—a problem that repeatedly came up in the event's sessions, from different angles and sectors.
Its presence at Smart Manufacturing Week positions the company alongside an audience that is no longer debating whether digital transformation is necessary, but rather how to implement it without stalling halfway through.
