By Steve Foxley, CEO, University of Sheffield AMRC 

Article featured in the latest issue of the AMRC Journal.

Our people and our culture is what underpins the AMRC strategy. We’re already four years into our planned ten-year strategy which sets out our targets up until 2030. However, since we outlined this plan, the world has changed, our market has changed and we have changed. 

In this article, I would like to take you through our refreshed AMRC strategy, what this means and introduce to you our new vision and mission. 

In September last year, we reviewed our strategy to see if the promises and targets we laid out in 2020 were still on track for 2030 - yes we are on track, doing exactly what we said we would do and happy with progress made. 

However, the reality is that the strategy we set out in 2020 to take us through to 2030, we found some gaps in it. Over the past few months, we’ve been reviewing the strategy and looking at what tweaks we can make.

Why does it make sense to do it now? 

As we’re closely reaching the mid-way point for this decade, we wanted to make sure the right adjustments are made for the next six years, to realise what we plan to achieve in this decade.

Some of the strategic themes we set out in 2020, we asked: ‘Are they still relevant or has the world changed?’, ‘Did we not quite understand what the industrial partners wanted?’, and ‘What adjustments do we need to make?’. 

How are we going to do this? 

Firstly, what we were finding with the group strategies is that they weren’t quite connecting right and there were certain things where the strategy didn’t quite fit with what the groups were focussing on. 

We also identified gaps in the strategy and found the objectives needed a little work - we knew what the themes were, but we didn’t fully iron out what we were aiming for up until 2030. 

All of these factors meant we had a good look at the strategy in the last couple of months. When I talk about objectives, you may recall our core strategy which focussed on our key themes of: sustainability, digital, future platforms and supply chain resilience. 

As part of our review process, we looked at a number of factors, including stakeholder feedback, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult strategy, the national network of research centres we are proud to be a member of, our core themes and the national and regional manufacturing landscape. 

This year, we’ve taken a different approach to help redefine the strategy. 

What have been the outcomes of our strategy review? 

At the top of it all, we asked ‘Why are we here?’, ‘What is our purpose and why do we exist as an organisation?’

Right now,  we are pretty happy with what we have defined. Our purpose is to: transform lives through innovation. Everything we’re doing every day, all of the things we shout about and our achievements – the reason behind all of that is we are trying to transform lives. Nothing has changed on our purpose - we’ve just underlined it. 

However, where we did have a gap was our vision and this is one of the new elements. 

Our vision is to be the most impactful manufacturing research centre in the world by 2035. 

This is all about where we are heading as an organisation and that was something we weren’t quite defining enough in 2020. We didn’t have a clear idea, but now we do. Why this is important is that we are deliberate about using the word ‘impact’. We do not want to be the biggest - we’re not interested in size, we’re interested in the impact we can make. 

We want to be the most impactful research centre on the planet and that is something we can measure, compare ourselves with countries like the US or Asia – and we already have a good idea of the impact we have made over the last 20 plus years at the AMRC. That is a new bit, the where we are heading and we want to make the most improvement out of all the research centres.

The mission?

This is about how we are going to get there - to the destination of being the most impactful manufacturing research centre globally by 2035.  

Our plan to achieve that is by:

• Driving UK manufacturing productivity improvements;
• Creating high value jobs, wealth and prestige by attracting investment; 
• Promoting an environment which attracts and develops the best talent;
• Transforming landscapes and creating inspiring environments. 

Just as we have done in Orgreave, and what we are trying to do in North Wales and the North West, all of that is feeding our vision and purpose and this is how we are going to deliver it. 

Our values

These are the things that underpin our strategy - it’s about the importance of our culture and striving to be the best we can be:

• We strive for excellence
• We work collaboratively 
• We champion inclusivity and diversity 
• We act with integrity to deliver value

Where do we put our horsepower? 

Coming back to our focus themes I mentioned earlier - we’ve got more refined on what we are working on. Some remain the same, supply chain resilience, but others have refreshed names, sustainable manufacturing and industrial digitalisation - with the final one now having a wider scope, future products and processes. 

Future products and processes have changed. After speaking to our industrial members, we know this focus theme is about more than just propulsion - it’s about the future platforms they're working on and even goes beyond that and is about the bigger picture.  

We’re also adding in increasing technology transfer and our FerretWorks programme, which facilitates ambitious steps in manufacturing research by giving engineers the freedom, space and time to create and explore new ideas, to run adjacent to these themes.  

Now, we are clearer with the messaging with our members and funders, helping with the meshing of our groups, which is helping them with their own individual strategies and how that feeds into the overall AMRC strategy. 

We're much sharper about our objectives. We want to have a laser-like focus on our core themes, what each means and what we want to get out of them. We have a more focussed direction of where we want to go in the future, coupled with clearer objectives and it’s these factors which is helping us to refine where we put our horsepower - not only to remain on track for 2030 and beyond, but to deliver what we set out to do, which is turning our world-leading research into practical improvements that make a difference for industry, our country and our communities.