The three projects intend to accelerate productivity and sustainability across Glasgow’s manufacturing and engineering businesses, with these local businesses working alongside partners including Boeing, SSE Renewables, Howden, Thales and Babcock.
These initiatives are supported with £5.4m from the UK government and up to £8.6m from industry partners.
NMIS said the first project, ReMake Glasgow, will see a first-of-its-kind national ReMake hub developed at its flagship facility next to Glasgow Airport within the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland.
The hub aims to provide the skills and technologies needed to support manufacturers of all sizes to adopt circularity and extend the life of products and parts. Through processes such as remanufacturing, refurbishing and repairs, the initiative aims to achieve a 99 per cent reduction in CO2 compared to manufacturing from new.
The consortium is developing new ways to remanufacture high-value components with local SMEs, alongside partners Howden – Chart Industries, SSE Renewables, Renewable Parts, British Airways Maintenance Glasgow, Boeing in Glasgow and ATS Global.
The Data Driven Design and Manufacturing Colab (D3M_Colab) project will explore the potential of data science to solve real-world manufacturing problems and boost productivity, according to NMIS.
D3M_Colab is set to upskill 300 local people with 100 hours of free training that will include a transformation project deployed within their workplace and ongoing support from NMIS experts and PhD students from Strathclyde University.
NMIS said Babcock has already extended its involvement in the programme, following two successful pilot cohorts in 2022 with over 16 students from Rosyth participating and solving business data challenges.
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The third initiative, named Stratellite, led by the NMIS Lightweight Manufacturing Centre (LMC) alongside Thales, taps into Scotland’s growing satellite manufacturing sector and focuses on a reconfigurable, modular, and scalable production system developed by the LMC.
The team from the LMC will develop the technology so that it is applicable for smaller businesses across a range of sectors, to help them to explore making new products in new markets without a large upfront investment.
In a statement, Chris Courtney, CEO of NMIS, said: “Working collaboratively across these strategic themes for next-generation manufacturing will help companies position themselves at the forefront of data-driven, sustainable advanced manufacturing.
“By collaborating with leaders and research experts across the manufacturing, engineering and technology sectors, we can provide the workforce of today and tomorrow with the skills they need to make the next generation of greener products.
“Scotland has a vibrant innovation ecosystem and this is a vital opportunity to harness the momentum to future-proof the sector by tackling big challenges.”
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Good comment. I think these reports are different from many others , in that they were prepared outside the government and the issues, they raised, of...