Assisting manufacturers in Lancashire to improve productivity through the adoption of Industry 4 technologies.

Recent studies have shown that UK manufacturing output and productivity is now significantly below the levels achieved by its competitors. This is a major concern for the UK government and for the success of individual companies. Addressing this problem will require an in depth understanding of current production methods and how these should be modified to improve productivity. The collection and analysis of production data will be one of the key enabling factors for companies wishing to improve their productivity.
DigitME2 is a project which offers Lancashire based manufacturing SME’s a risk-free opportunity to see how they can make the best use of their production and environment data to help improve productivity and quality. The project works with a wide range of SMEs to help them begin, or enhance, their journey toward data driven manufacturing.
Delivered by the University of Central Lancashire, (UCLan) and part funded by the European Development Fund (ERDF), DigitME first launched in 2012 and continued with further funding from 2016, becoming DigitME2.
DigitME2 is based in Burnley, Lancashire, at the Advanced Digital Manufacturing Centre within the UCLan Burnley Campus. The project has a full-time dedicated team which specialise in data acquisition, data analytics and Industry Internet of Things and are experienced in software development and embedded system development.
The move to data driven manufacturing generally provokes ideas of expense, interruption to production and job losses, however, DigitME2 works toward helping to dispel these ideas, showing that small changes don’t need to be expensive, can have significant positive effects on productivity and create opportunities for upskilling staff.
Additionally, companies which utilise data driven decision making within their own production systems will have increased opportunity to become part of supply chains which rely on the acquisition and analysis of data within their decision-making process.

What do we offer?
For manufacturing SMEs who are starting out on their data usage journey, DigitME2 offers free, open source, software for monitoring machine utilisation, process timings and environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, sound levels, etc.
We aim to make your introduction to data driven manufacturing as easy as possible and so we will assist in setting up the software, we may even loan you the hardware to run the software and then we will help you make the best use of the software for up to six weeks.
At the end of the assist, you can continue to use the software, or move to a commercially supported solution now that you are more aware of your specific requirements.

For SMEs who already have software systems which collect production-based data, DigitME2 can provide assistance with the design and creation of data visualisation and data analytics systems.

DigitME2 provides fully funded support, assistance comes at no cost to your business. For more information on working with DigitME2 and eligibility, contact Kelly Aitken KAitken@uclan.ac.uk Tel. 01772 896091