Re-Distributed Manufacturing and the Resilient, Sustainable City (ReDReSC)

The world's manufacturing economy has been transformed by the phenomenon of globalisation, with benefits for economies of scale, operational flexibility, risk sharing and access to new markets. It has been at the cost of a loss of manufacturing and other jobs in western economies, loss of core capabilities and increased risks of disruption in the highly interconnected and interdependent global systems. The resource demands and environmental impacts of globalisation have also led to a loss of sustainability. New highly adaptable manufacturing processes and techniques capable of operating at small scales may allow a rebalancing of the manufacturing economy. They offer the possibility of a new understanding of where and how design, manufacture and services should be carried out to achieve the most appropriate mix of capability and employment possibilities in our economies but also to minimise environmental costs, to improve product specialisation to markets and to ensure resilience of provision under natural and socio-political disruption. This proposal brings together an interdisciplinary academic team to work with industry and local communities to explore the impact of this re-distribution of manufacturing (RDM) at the scale of the city and its hinterland, using Bristol as an example in its European Green Capital year, and concentrating on the issues of resilience and sustainability. The aim of this exploration will be to develop a vision, roadmap and research agenda for the implications of RDM for the city, and at the same time develop a methodology for networked collaboration between the many stakeholders that will allow deep understanding of the issues to be achieved and new approaches to their resolution explored.

The network will study the issues from a number of disciplinary perspectives, bringing together experts in manufacturing, design, logistics, operations management, infrastructure, resilience, sustainability, engineering systems, geographical sciences, mathematical modelling and beyond. They will consider how RDM may contribute to the resilience and sustainability of a city in a number of ways: firstly, how can we characterise the economic, social and environmental challenges that we face in the city for which RDM may contribute to a solution? Secondly, what are the technical developments, for example in manufacturing equipment and digital technologies, that are enablers for RDM, and what are their implications for a range of manufacturing applications and for the design of products and systems? Thirdly, what are the social and political developments, for example in public policy, in regulation, in the rise of social enterprise or environmentalism that impact on RDM and what are their implications? Fourthly, what are the business implications, on supply networks and logistics arrangements, of the re-distribution? Finally, what are the implications for the physical and digital infrastructure of the city?

In addition, the network will, through the way in which it carries out embedded focused studies, explore mechanisms by which interdisciplinary teams may come together to address societal grand challenges and develop research agendas for their solution. These will be based on working together using a combination of a Collaboratory - a centre without walls - and a Living Lab - a gathering of public-private partnerships in which businesses, researchers, authorities, and citizens work together for the creation of new services, business ideas, markets, and technologies.

This proposal has strong potential for impact on academic communities and more widely on a wide variety of stakeholders including businesses, manufacturers, policy makers, the non-profit and voluntary sector and the general public, at local and national level.

For academic communities, the network will develop and influence the re-distributed manufacturing research agenda, identify research challenges, and help form research teams to articulate and address the challenges. Two aspects are particularly important:

- The bringing of manufacturing issues, and especially the potential of small-scale highly adaptable processes, to the forefront in research communities addressing the future development of cities, infrastructure, logistics, operations management and the economic geography and politics of regions and production networks, especially in the context of resilience and sustainability.
- To bring regional, business, application, socio-technical and infrastructure issues to the fore in the design and manufacturing communities that are developing the technical aspects of re-distributed manufacturing.
The network will take a number of steps to achieve this influence. Network meetings will be held to address particular themes, and members of the respective communities will be invited to those events; the network will actively link to other influential groups at national level - the Catapult network, EPSRC programmes such as the International Centre on Infrastructure Futures and the EPSRC Centres for Innovative Manufacturing and ESRC programmes under the Sustainable Prosperity Nexus Network. The network will also engage strongly with individuals, research programmes and academic communities on an international scale.
The network will also make the role of new manufacturing approaches more visible to the wider community, and will provide a mechanism for exploration and development of new ideas in this respect. This will be achieved in a number of ways - through social media and active blogs and discussion forums, through open access to meetings, through industry/academic sandpit events, through participation in experiments and innovation and access to equipment and skilled staff for experiment, and also through interaction with the extensive existing networks with which the network partners are involved.

Particular beneficiaries of the project will be manufacturers who will benefit by being less exposed to global supply chain risks, by being introduced to new business opportunities and access to new business models, and who can gain a better understanding of the socio-technical context of their activities. The benefits may accrue especially to SMEs who want to respond quickly to changing customer needs or demand but will also include design studios, individuals and companies in the creative sector, systems integrators and inward-investing companies.

Bristol's role as European Green Capital will allow the network to have a strong impact across Europe and beyond, as will its membership of the 100 Resilient Cities network. In addition to the impact on the region's manufacturers and businesses, this will allow the network to influence decision-makers at local and national level, involved for example in land use development, infrastructure planning and business support strategies, as well as opinion-forming channels in the non-profit and employee representative sectors.