Catapult is dedicated to working
hand in hand with industry and the
UK’s vibrant tech startup community,
and it’s really encouraging to see so
many organisations from the sector
seize this opportunity to embrace
innovation as an important means
of building back better. The Made
Smarter Technology Accelerator
will make visible how a range of
disruptive emerging technologies
will really work to benefit early
industrial adopters. It will also clarify
routes to market for digital innovators.
The outcomes from this programme
are really positive, we will see new
and traditional businesses working
together – making enormous savings,
significantly improving productivity,
developing new business models,
boosting exports and delivering on
challenging net-zero targets.”
Juergen Maier, Chair of Digital
Catapult and Co-Chair of Made
Smarter added: “Our newly
announced partners have set
ambitious challenges, and the
UK’s vibrant and diverse digital
technology innovation community is
incredibly well-placed to respond. By
creating bonds between technology
startups and scaleups and the
manufacturing industry we have the
opportunity for the UK to lead the way
in the fourth industrial revolution – as
advanced technology radically alters,
and improves, the way we approach
manufacturing.”
Andy Schofield, Technology
Delivery Director at BAE Systems
said, “BAE Systems is on a continuing
mis-sion to be a front-line developer
and instigator of future manufacturing
technology. Our customers’ demands
for ever more complex and
flexible products along with ever
shortening timelines and challenging
cost targets makes alignment with the
Made Smarter Accelerator and Digital
Catapult a clear match to achieving our
long-term goals, thereby sustaining
us as a driving force in both UK and
global manufacturing markets.”
Digital Catapult launched
the Made Smarter Technology
Accelerator in September, calling for
medium and large manufacturing
industry partners to participate.
The programme aims to help
manufacturers solve some of their key
challenges, as well as fast-forward
and shape the UK’s technolo-gy
adoption directly into industry.
Following successful onboarding,
partners will work together to set
the industry challenges which will
see companies from the UK’s worldleading
digital technology innovation
community develop prototypes that
ultimately answer and solve these
problems.
The Made Smarter Technology
Accelerator was seeking partners
with challenges in five programme
themes:
■ Intelligent factory management
and control
■ Intelligent product verification
and validation
■ Transparent and data driven
procurement
■ Digitally enabled factory workforce
■ Resource measurement
and analytics
Focusing on these themes and
intensifying the market of digital
innovators will drive multiple
out-comes for the manufacturing
sector; to aid economic recovery
from the COVID-19 pandemic,
im-prove productivity, increase
market capitalisation, export growth
and accelerating sectors towards
industrial net zero.
There are varying levels of
involvement for partners depending
on the level of investment and -
uniquely for a programme of this type
– eight Industry Challenge Owners
are being invited to shape and set the
challenges addressed by the startups
and scaleups with their technology
innovations.
In return for match-funded
financial contributions, partners will
gain direct access to the outputs and
learnings of the programme as well
as have prototypes developed for
challenges they set. !
Digital Catapult
provides physical and
digital facilities for
experimentation and
testing that would
otherwise not be
accessible for smaller
companies.
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