Public Funding for Valuechain Technology Ltd

Valuechain Technology Ltd, based in Liverpool, is leading an exciting new innovation project that has ambition to impact the manufacturing industry. With their growing B2B platform already boasting 55 leading industry associations and over 6000 manufacturing SMEs, Valuechain is uniquely positioned to spearhead the development of a new Data & AI led innovation, the NetGrow module. By leveraging the power of advanced data analytics and machine learning techniques, NetGrow will empower manufacturing SMEs to unlock their full potential. The module will enable them to identify new opportunities for growth and innovation, diversify into new sectors, and pivot their business to take advantage of emerging technologies and industries. NetGrow is not just a tool for growth, but a tool for change. By advancing net zero and resource efficiency, exploiting digital and technologically advanced manufacturing, and strengthening resilience and responsiveness in supply chains, the project will help create a more sustainable and resilient economy. With a critical mass of use cases and industrial feedback upon completion, the Network Portal platform will represent a tremendous commercial opportunity. The initial target market for the platform will be manufacturers based in the Liverpool City Region (LCR), but we anticipate generating sales across the whole of the UK and beyond within a year of commercialization. In addition to its economic benefits, the project will also contribute to the Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity of the innovation cluster by tackling issues related to resilient supply chains, high-value production, and key enabling themes such as digital technologies, clean energy, regulations and policy, and networked relations. With NetGrow, we believe that we can empower manufacturing SMEs to achieve their full potential, unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation, and build a better, more sustainable future for all.

The SAVVIER project aims to help UK materials and manufacturing organisations become more competitive and fit for the future by helping them work together in efficient and cooperative supply chains. In our vision for the future, the wastes or by-products of one industrial partner in a supply chain become the material inputs for another partner. These 'secondary materials' are reused as replacements for virgin raw materials (e.g. sourced from the extraction of earth resources). Material users see benefits as they do not have to source and import virgin materials, while material suppliers avoid the problem of disposing of their wastes or by-products. This collaborative approach -- known as Industrial Symbiosis -- also provides a great opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution from wastes, as resources are maintained in use for longer. The SAVVIER project partners aim to show the feasibility of using a digital platform and supply chain mapping and assessment methods to help establish collaborative UK supply chains for the supply, processing and use of waste-derived materials. The project will focus on silicate and aluminosilicate materials. Silicates (i.e. materials that contain a metal ion, silicon and oxygen) and aluminosilicates (that additionally contain aluminium ions) are important inorganic materials used in multiple applications, including laundry detergents, paper and card, adhesives, cements, tyres, desiccants (including cat litter) and as catalysts for many industrial processes. The project will use a real industrial challenge (replacement of silicates and aluminosilicates in dry laundry powers) as a focus for the project.

actoryTw.in will combine 6 state-of-the-art IDTs to generate digital twins enabling manufacturing SME to optimise productivity, energy consumption and customer delivery performance. A brief summary of the complementary technologies are as follows: 1. Digital Twin creation in XR: * Capturing a factory shop-floor and rendering it in 3D using 360° VR cameras and photogrammetry equipment viz. Laser scanners. * Integrated with full 6-degrees-of-freedom interactivity, working across platforms viz. VR, mobile, desktop and online. * Building use-cases for training, data visualization, process and operational visualization and control of factories remotely. 2\. XR-based collaboration platform in a Metaverse * Leveraging the digital twin, allowing multiple users to enter the Metaverse and collaborating in real-time over the internet with full 6-degrees-of-freedom interactivity. * Aiding the multi-user collaboration with full sync of text, voice, sound and interactions over the internet. * Allowing spectator views for viewers to access the Metaverse and engage via the platform of their choice viz. VR, mobile, desktop and online. * Integrating granular analytics within the platform defining user behaviour in the Met-averse. * Plug and play MES scheduler & SFDC solution 3\. Next Generation Manufacturing Execution System * APIs to integrate with disparate ERP systems * Integrated Shop Floor Data Capture * Digital backbone to integrate the IIOT sensors, computer vision and AI scheduler.\` 4\. IIOT sensors * Providing scalable, rapid-to-deploy and super low-cost sensors 5\. Computer vision AI * Digitalising human activities and operations providing critical SFDC and scheduling inputs * Automating the digital inspection of components to generate granular quality history and traceability 6\. Production optimisation AI * AI Scheduling will be focused on customer OTIF (on-time in full) delivery but also balanced against optimising productivity (Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)) and minimising energy consumption * SMEs can optimise scheduling scenarios based on diagnostic analyics and continuous predictive AI feedback loop * Capturing diagnostic data and insight from experienced production planners combined with machine learning algorithms to continually refine planning data and forecast schedules. Together, these innovative technologies will form a game-changing virtual representation of a company's factory -- at significantly lower cost and within a few days rather than several months. This project will combine real-time data captured from IIOT sensors, shop floor data capture and computer-vision system, underpinned by dynamic AI-enabled scheduler, all fully integrated and embedded within a digital-twin demonstrator of a LCR-based manufacturing SME. The visibility created by the platform will also help to drive improved collaboration across supply-chains, enabling OEMs to see more clearly the challenges at suppliers' sites, and vice-versa.

Environment Centred Optimisation of SME Productivity using Realtime INTelligence (ECO-SPRINT) - focuses on the aligned sustainability & productivity needs of manufacturing SMEs. It brings together a consortium of IDT providers that focus on manufacturing data & intelligence, eager to build sustainability into their offerings. The project will start with a focus on energy-intensive aerospace special finishing processes (with Poetons as the lead demonstrator - the UK's largest independent surface treatment business), and then demonstrate scalability through deployment in another sector courtesy of Metal Assemblies Ltd. Recognising that many processes are hard to automate, it will develop an innovative vision intelligence system (VIOLET) combined with a scalable and rapid-to-deploy IIoT solution. It will integrate this with an innovative combination of IDTs onto which sustainability intelligence capability will be integrated including a Smart Manufacturing Execution System (MES); a "customer/supplier portal" which shares intelligence on demand volatility, an advanced scheduling system, an asset protection system, and a configurable Business Intelligence (BI) solution. The outputs from ECO-SPRINT will enable SMEs to: -capture unprecedented business intelligence about human operations which will feed into the consortium's scheduling software and enable optimisation of manual processes such as casting plants, electroplating vats and heat treatment oven utilisation -capture plant and energy utilisation data enabling real-time optimisation -digitise human action from skilled special-process operators to provide automated time, motion and risk capture data -extract and segment videos of human actions on the special-process house optimisation of plant and utilities to retain best-practice through digitalised knowledge transfer -gather data on carbon and material footprint that can be communicated and aggregated across supply chains (eg. through Valuechain's supplier and customer portals)

There is an immediate need for granular supply-chain intelligence and proactive risk mitigation through collaboration and focused intervention, to prevent good UK aerospace, automotive and other HVM SMEs from getting into unrecoverable financial difficulties. However, in order to mitigate impact of Covid-19, UK aerospace and automotive manufacturing businesses can no longer work in silos and compete as individual organisations. Instead, they must connect and collaborate with customers and suppliers so that they can compete as integrated, cross-sector manufacturing ecosystems, which enables organisations to focus on core competences, benefit from economies-of-scale and share knowledge. This project will address significant barriers that inhibit growth of cross-sector manufacturing ecosystems; such as supply chain transparency, data security, trust, engagement and lack of digitalised infrastructure to streamline the capture, curation and analysis of reliable supply-chain big data. **ACCESS Innovations:** * launch a cross-sector SME-focused supply-chain collaboration digital marketplace that will enable B2B tendering and collaboration * establish a freemium smart manufacturing app-store that will drive SME engagement and incentivise users to maintain profile data, connect with other network users and drive collaboration * generate cross-sector classification taxonomy that underpins B2B matchmaking AI to automatically recommend connections for work package tenders and innovation consortium **ACCESS Outcomes:** * unprecedented multi-tier visibility of UK aerospace and automotive supply-chain which will reduce sub-tier risks and increase on-shoring opportunities * connect aerospace and automotive suppliers with cross-sector high growth opportunities such as rail, sustainable transport and renewable energy supply-chains * enable aerospace and automotive manufacturing SMEs to identify new sustainable supply-chain opportunities, to catalyse business re-purposing, mitigate business downturn and loss of critical skills * provide UK OEMs and Government bodies with unprecedented granular industry intelligence to focus policy and intervention support, ensuring UK taxpayer's money deployed most effectively to re-grow UK aerospace and automotive manufacturing whilst focusing on sustainability and green agenda.

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