A factory that can physically reconfigure itself—morphing its layout, machines, and production lines on demand—is the goal of this research centre. The problem is stark: today’s factories are rigid, built for one product at high volume, and fail when supply chains snap or demand shifts suddenly, as the pandemic made brutally clear. The UK lacks the ability to rapidly repurpose production capacity for critical goods like ventilators or to relocate manufacturing closer to customers without rebuilding entire plants. This centre will develop the fundamental principles—digital twins, AI-driven control, wireless sensor networks, and modular machine architectures—that allow production units to be unplugged, moved, and reprogrammed as easily as rearranging furniture. If successful, a single factory could switch from making car parts to medical devices overnight, or a network of small, local “micro-factories” could replace a few giant, vulnerable plants. The impact would be a manufacturing sector that is resilient to disruptions, greener because production happens closer to customers, and capable of producing complex, customised goods without the cost penalty of traditional bespoke manufacturing. This is applied engineering, not fundamental science; the centre will test its concepts through real-world demonstrations in smart machining, 3D printing, and autonomous assembly.
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The future prosperity of the UK will increasingly depend on building and maintaining a resilient and sustainable manufacturing sector that can respond to changing supply and demand by adapting, repurposing, relocating and reusing available production capabilities. The pandemic which emerged in 2020 has influenced our perspective of future manufacturing operations and, in particular, has brought into focus the capacity challenges of delivering critical products and maintaining production in the face of major disruptions. It also accelerated the emerging trend for more localised, greener and cost-competitive indigenous manufacturing infrastructure with the ability to produce a wider set of complex products faster, better and cheaper. To meet the long-term structural and post-pandemic challenges, we need transformative new methods of building and utilising future factories by embracing complexity, uncertainty and data intensity in a dynamic and rapidly changing world. The "Morphing Factory" Made Smarter Centre aims to deliver a platform for next generation resilient connected manufacturing services. It will allow future manufacturing operations to be delivered by ubiquitous production units that can be easily repurposed, relocated and redeployed in response to changing market demand. This vision will be delivered through 3 closely related strands: (1) An underpinning fundamental research programme to define the principles, methods and models for future morphing factories in terms of architecture, topology, configuration methods, IoT digital awareness, in-process monitoring and AI based autonomous control. (50%). (2) A dynamic challenge-driven applied research programme to address emerging industrial needs and validate and demonstrate the results through a set of application studies including smart machining, production integrated 3D printing and autonomous assembly integrated into a common hyperconnected morphing factory cloud (45%). (3) A programme of networking and engagement activities with other ISCF Made Smarter research and innovation centres, industry and the general public to maximise the impact of the research, encourage accelerated technology uptake and increase the public awareness (5%).
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