EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Transformation of Metals Industry

The DigitalMetal CDT is born out to meet a national, strategic need for training a new generation of technical leaders able to lead digital transformation of metals industry & its supply chain with the objective of increasing agility, productivity & international competitiveness of the metals industry in the UK. The metals industry is a vital component of the UK's manufacturing economy and makes a significant contribution to key strategic sectors such as construction, aerospace, automotive, energy, defence and medical, directly contributing £20bn to UK GDP, and underpins over £190bn manufacturing GDP. Without a new cadre of leaders in digital technologies, equipped to transform discoveries and breakthroughs in metals and manufacturing (M&M) technologies into products, the UK risks entering another cycle of world-leading innovation but losing the benefits arising from exploitation to more capable and better prepared global competitors. The evolution to Industry 4.0 and Materials 4.0 coupled with unprecedented opportunities of "big data" enable the uptake of artificial intelligence/deep learning (AI/DL) based solutions, making it feasible to implement zero-defects, right first-time manufacturing/zero-waste (ZDM/ZW) concepts and meet the environmental-, sustainable- and societal- challenges. However, to fully take advantage of these opportunities, two critical challenges must be addressed. First, as user-identified problems in the metals industry that spans domains (from discoveries in M&M to their up-scaling and deployment in high volume/value production), urgently needed a new breed of engineers with skills to traverse these domains by going beyond the classical PhD training, i.e., T-model signifying transferable skills and in-depth knowledge in a single domain, to a new Pi-model raining that is underpinned by transferable skills and in-depth knowledge that transverse across domains i.e.,: AI/DL and engineering (M&M) to enable rapid exploitation of discoveries in M&M. Second, while AI/DL domain provides data-driven correlation analysis critical for product performance and defect identification, it is insufficient for root cause analysis (causality). This necessitates training on integrating data-driven with physics-based models of product & production, which is currently lacking in the metals industry. The Midlands region, as the top contributor to UK Gross Value Added through metals and metal products, with world-leading companies, such as Rolls-Royce and Constellium, LEAR and their customers, underpinned through collaborations with the five Midlands universities: Birmingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham & Warwick, is uniquely positioned to integrate research and industry resources and train a new cadre of engineers & researchers on the Pi-model to address user-needs. Our vision is to train future leaders able to accelerate the exploitation of M&M discoveries using digital technology to enable defect-free, right first-time manufacturing at reduced costs, digitise to decarbonise, and implement fuel switching in metals manufacturing industry.