Aventa UK Ltd will develop a demonstrator pilot system that optimises process effiency, material usage and energy consumption in the aerospace surface treatment sector by integrating processing plant with a cloud based decision support tool that balances the challenges of high variety, low volume & volatile customer order book, disparate aerospace OEM technical specifications, increasing environmental legislation and vast numbers of operating variables with the objective of optimising plant utilisation and throughput to the most stringent levels of quality.

The ability to respond proactively to customer sales enquiries, prove capability through robust new product introduction processes and managing risk is critical to the success of UK advanced manufacturing companies. However as advanced manufacturing companies continue to focus on core competences and outsource non-core processes they become increasingly reliant on their supply chain partners. Unfortunately UK engineering SMEs do not have the tools, processes and behaviours to openly collaborate with their supply chain partners which can result in a fragmented and disjointed service to the end customer. This feasibility study will develop a cloud-based demonstrator system focused on effective collaboration between advanced manufacturing UK SMEs to drive global competitiveness.