The University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) is the latest organisation to become a regional partner of digital industries organisation Sheffield Digital.

The partnership will enable the AMRC to work with Sheffield Digital on activities that will help to bring the region’s advanced manufacturing and digital businesses closer together. Over the coming months, Sheffield Digital will be collaborating with the AMRC to create opportunities for digital and manufacturing companies to meet, share information, identify challenges and collaborate on solutions.

Rab Scott, the AMRC’s Head of Digital, explains, “We want to be the place where people come to see and interact with the technology, explore the pros and cons and understand where to invest in order to achieve value. The 4th Industrial Revolution (aka Industry 4.0) is being driven by digital technology, so it makes absolute sense to build closer links between local digital companies and the region’s manufacturers. The digital sector needs to know about the needs of manufacturing and manufacturers need to understand the capabilities of digital technologies. The AMRC is the obvious place to bring people together to learn and collaborate and Sheffield Digital is the right partner to help us make that happen.”

Mel Kanarek, one of the directors and founders of Sheffield Digital, adds, “We’re delighted to have this relationship with the AMRC in place. Sheffield Digital’s community includes many digital businesses that have the ideas and skills that manufacturing needs. This partnership will help feed that expertise into the supply chain and increase opportunities for innovation and the development of new businesses.”

The AMRC has eleven core capabilities which include integrated manufacturing, design and prototyping, additive manufacturing and virtual reality. It is also home to the AMRC’s Integrated Manufacturing Group (IMG).

IMG’s work spans robotics and automation, integrated large volume metrology, digitally assisted assembly and manufacturing informatics. Among other things, the Group is developing ways of meeting demand for high variation and mass customisation, intelligent machines and processes that monitor and optimise their operations, techniques to shorten lead times and ramp production up and down rapidly, ways of handling and making sense of big data, human machine collaboration and techniques for digitally assisted assembly.

Rab is also on the board of Immerse UK, a recently launched cross-sector network for businesses and research organisations across all parts of the UK economy that are interested in the way that augmented and virtual reality can help drive productivity, social and economic growth.

Sheffield Digital: https://sheffield.digital