The Made Smarter Technology Accelerator is run by Digital Catapult, the UK authority in advanced digital technology. It has been developed to pair industry leaders with technology start-ups to enable the use of advanced technology to radically alter, and improve, the way manufacturing is approached.
Through each individual challenge the programme aims to improve productivity in the manufacturing sector and help boost the post-Covid economy – supporting the wider Manufacturing Made Smarter Challenge with its ambition to raise productivity by 30% by 2030.
Each of the 14 start-ups and scaleups will be developing solutions to address some of the UK’s most prevalent manufacturing challenges, in collaboration with their Industry Challenge Owners – which include Babcock International Group and Sainsbury’s – and the programme’s Tech Sponsors, Verizon Business and Software AG.
The start-ups and scaleups will each receive up to £20,000 programme funding as they build prototypes and can then apply for a further £100,000 of programme funding to develop minimum viable products later in the programme – resulting in solutions which could be applied for commercial use.
The challenges range from increasing shelf-life and sell-through rate of products while reducing waste (Sainsbury’s) to scalable artificial intelligence for products’ visual inspection (BAE Systems).
Dr Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult said: "The UK’s startup community leads Europe in developing applications for advanced digital technologies – but to reap the rewards of this innovation, those developments must be adopted by industrial partners and customers in the UK and around the world.
“With our focus turning to economic recovery, the Made Smarter Technology programme emphasises the role of advanced digital technologies in tackling industry challenges head-on.
“Congratulations to the successful start-ups and scaleups who will be working with our industry partners to develop ideas from AI solutions to improve food products’ shelf life, to tech to improve ship design – helping propel UK manufacturing."
Juergen Maier, chair of Digital Catapult and co-chair of Made Smarter added: “Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about extremely challenging conditions for the manufacturing sector, it also represents a chance for industry to take a step back to explore how we can innovate and apply advanced digital technologies to do things better.
“This programme has brought to the fore the world class expertise in the UK technology sector and by pairing bright startups and scaleups with large manufacturers, we hope to leverage those capabilities across a variety of disruptive emerging technologies to meet industry needs – from cutting costs, to boosting productivity.”
Minister for Investment, Lord Grimstone said: “The Made Smarter Technology Accelerator will leverage the world-leading innovation of UK start-ups to overcome some of the most pressing challenges faced by the manufacturing industry.
“This programme will empower cutting edge start-ups, specialising in areas such as AI and robotics, to collaborate with industry giants, helping businesses to build back better from the pandemic.”
The 14 start-ups and scale ups chosen, their solution and their respective challenge owners are:
| Startup | Challenge Owner | Solution |
| Sainsbury’s, microbial control in ready to eat foods | High-tech cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure food safety from microbes and rot | |
| Babcock International Group, digital shipbuilding | Using tech from the gaming and music sectors to support shipbuilding engineers to collaborate on design in real time | |
| BAE Systems, dynamic workflow management | AI solutions and SCALE+, a systems dynamic model, to provide actionable supply chain insights, on where wastage occurs and improving sustainability | |
| Northumbrian Water, sewer blockages | An unmanned module to tackle sewer blockages using AI | |
| Babcock International Group, Warrior base overhaul | Solution uses existing equipment and combined data output to create an automatic 3D dataset, to ease the hull inspection process | |
| BAE Systems, scalable artificial intelligence for visual inspection | This prototype will use machine learning to identify defects in manufacturing, improve the quality of the end product, reduce waste and save money | |
| O’Neills, product customisation – intelligent verification | A digital manufacturing system that uses customer order data and converts this data into simple, easy to follow manufacturing steps and checks | |
| O’Neills’, automation of production | Developing an AI guided 'seambot' to feed material through an Industrial Sewing Machine without human intervention - a world first in a commercial environment | |
| Northumbrian Water, monitoring water quality within the distribution network and real time analysis | The ITERATION project delivers a cloud-enabled, remote water quality monitoring solution | |
| Sainsbury’s, increasing shelf life and sell through of products while reducing waste | AI-based decision-making to develop a predictive shelf-life model for the supply chain, along with an automated, centralised optimal control system. | |
| Safran Landing Systems, adaptive scheduling and performance monitoring | A data-driven planning scheduling and resource optimisation solution to tackle the challenges of complex planning and resource management. | |
| GAF, asphalt material characterisation | Adapting existing chemical and olfactory testing instruments to deliver non-invasive, batch-on-batch asphalt profiling, without any additional specialist lab equipment. | |
| GAF, machine vision systems for product conformance and machine condition | Machine vision and sensor technology to assess product conformance that is fast, accurate, affordable, and scalable. | |
| Safran Landing Systems, implementation of SPC on all test rigs in the assembly shop | A portable edge industrial internet of things (IIoT) analysis platform to create a repository and platform to manage data from across teams and across functions. |
The successful startups and scaleups will be presenting their industry-changing prototypes at a presentation event on 23 June 2021.
