A Scottish research institute is developing the manufacturing tools and processes—from digital design software to laser-based production and microscopic sensor packaging—that will determine whether UK factories can survive against global competition. This matters because high-value manufacturing—think medical devices, optical components, or precision sensors—is increasingly a battle over knowledge and skills, not just labour costs. Without a dedicated research base, UK industry risks losing the ability to make the complex, customised products that generate the most profit and the most skilled jobs. If the institute succeeds, UK manufacturers will gain access to three things: digital tools that let engineers manipulate 3D product data across networked teams; photonics-based production methods that enable low-cost, high-precision automated manufacture; and new ways to package micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) cheaply and reliably at scale. These are not consumer products. They are the invisible infrastructure—better sensors, faster optical communications, smarter production lines—that keeps advanced economies competitive. The institute aims to become a European centre of excellence in MEMS packaging and the leading UK hub for industrially relevant photonics research and development.
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The Scottish Manufacturing Institute aims to research technology for manufacture, addressing the requirements of European, UK and regional industries. It taps into the broad expanse of research at Heriot-Watt University to deliver innovative manufacturing technology solutions. The SMI delivers high quality research and education in innovative manufacturing technology for high value, lower volume, highly customised, and high IP content products that enable European and UK Manufacturers to compete in an environment of increased global competition, environmental concern, sustainability and regulation, where access to knowledge, skills and IP determine where manufacturing is located. Our mission is to deliver high impact research in innovative manufacturing technologies based on the multidisciplinary technology resource across Heriot-Watt University, the Edinburgh Research Partnership, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance and beyond. The Institute is organised into three themes:- Digital Tools;- Photonics; and - MicrosystemsThe vision of the Digital Tools Theme is to provide tomorrow's engineers with tools that will help them to easily capture, locate, exploit and manipulate 3D information for mechanical products of all kinds using distributed, networked resources. Photonics has strong resonance with the needs of developed economies to compete in the 21st Century global market for manufacturing, providing: routes to low cost automated manufacture; and the key processes underpinning high added value products. We have a shared conviction that photonics technologies are an essential component of any credible strategy for knowledge-based industrial production. The Photonics Theme vision is for the SMI to be internationally recognised as the leading UK focus for industrially-relevant photonics R&D, delivering a mix of academic and commercial outputs in hardware, process technology and production applications.The principal strategy of the Microsystems Theme is to research into new integration and packaging solutions of MEMS that are low cost, mass manufacturable and easily adoptable by the industry. The vision is to become a European Centre of Excellence in MEMS integration and packaging over the next 5 years. We thus aspire to service UK manufacturing industry with innovative technology for high value, lower volume, highly customised, and high IP content products; and to help UK industry expand globally in an internationally competitive market.
Andrew Moore (Co-Investigator)Denis Hall (Co-Investigator)Duncan Hand (Co-Investigator)James Ritchie (Co-Investigator)Julian Jones (Principal Investigator)Marc Desmulliez (Co-Investigator)Mike Chantler (Co-Investigator)
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