ECO-SPRINT: Environment Centred Optimisation of SME Productivity using Realtime INTelligence

Environment Centred Optimisation of SME Productivity using Realtime INTelligence (ECO-SPRINT) - focuses on the aligned sustainability & productivity needs of manufacturing SMEs.

It brings together a consortium of IDT providers that focus on manufacturing data & intelligence, eager to build sustainability into their offerings.

The project will start with a focus on energy-intensive aerospace special finishing processes (with Poetons as the lead demonstrator - the UK's largest independent surface treatment business), and then demonstrate scalability through deployment in another sector courtesy of Metal Assemblies Ltd.

Recognising that many processes are hard to automate, it will develop an innovative vision intelligence system (VIOLET) combined with a scalable and rapid-to-deploy IIoT solution. It will integrate this with an innovative combination of IDTs onto which sustainability intelligence capability will be integrated including a Smart Manufacturing Execution System (MES); a "customer/supplier portal" which shares intelligence on demand volatility, an advanced scheduling system, an asset protection system, and a configurable Business Intelligence (BI) solution. The outputs from ECO-SPRINT will enable SMEs to:

-capture unprecedented business intelligence about human operations which will feed into the consortium's scheduling software and enable optimisation of manual processes such as casting plants, electroplating vats and heat treatment oven utilisation

-capture plant and energy utilisation data enabling real-time optimisation

-digitise human action from skilled special-process operators to provide automated time, motion and risk capture data

-extract and segment videos of human actions on the special-process house optimisation of plant and utilities to retain best-practice through digitalised knowledge transfer

-gather data on carbon and material footprint that can be communicated and aggregated across supply chains (eg. through Valuechain's supplier and customer portals)