TM Uni Supplement 2013

UNIVERSITIES supplement 2013 Midlands focus Find out about collaborative work between industry and universities in the Midlands.

• What benefits can companies gain?

• How easy is it to engage with universities?

• What disciplines and/or topics are universities interested in exploring?

p03 Introduction p04

Exclusive interview with Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts

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Tailored for business

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Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

p10

Industry Partners Sought for Pioneering Engineering Doctorate Programme

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HVM Catapult in the Midlands

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SMEs meet academia

Developing the next generation of business leaders Cranfield University has been training manufacturing and materials professionals for over 30 years.

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Our postgraduate programmes are practical, research-informed, professionally accredited and tailored for industry, while offering global career opportunities.

Cranfield University courses are designed and developed in collaboration with industry. Our excellence in education and training is recognised by:

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The Institution of Mechanical Engineers The Institution of Engineering & Technology Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining The Royal Aeronautical Society

Our MSc programmes include: • Manufacturing • Materials • Design • Executive Masters Full-time, part-time and short course study options available. Please visit our website for a full list of courses.

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‘Cranfield has been the turning point of my professional career. As soon as an industrial expert views my CV and spots Cranfield's name, he knows that I went through a challenging academic experience. Cranfield's educational excellence and great industrial relations is incomparable’.

Baddah Al Hajri Engineering and Management of Manufacturing Systems

Midlands UNIVERSITIES

INTRODUCTION

UNIVERSITIES supplement 2013 Midlands focus

UK

Universities are often described as ‘world class’ and they certainly attract a large proportion of foreign students to Britain’s shores. In the academic year 2011/2012 17.4% of students to enrol at UK universities were not domiciled in the UK before beginning their studies and 12.1% were from outside the EU – mostly from Asia.

This is good news for the coffers of Britain’s academic elite who can charge even higher fees to foreign students, but of what wider economic value is this ‘world class’ university system?

This supplement explains the impetus behind academicindustrial engagement with a focus on collaborative projects in the Midlands, Britain’s industrial heartland. Our interview with David Willett’s (pXX) describes the changing ratio of government versus private sector investment in such programmes, and explains the need to accelerate knowledge from the ivory tower to the shop floor and transfer its value to the order books of UK companies.

Meanwhile, contributions from regional academic leaders explain a range of options or styles how collaboration can take place depending on company size and sector. Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, engineering doctorate programmes, Catapult centres and more are explored.

Read on to understand how recognised mega trends and strategic market opportunities are guiding the focus of university research. Learn how your company might benefit.

WHAT’S IN THIS SUPPLEMENT?

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Exclusive interview with Universities and Science Minister, David Willetts Tom Moore talks to the Minister about his vision for university funding and research and asks how higher level apprenticeships fit with traditional routes to graduate level skills.

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The exquisite art of idleness Birmingham University’s Pro-vice Chancellor Professor Richard Williams OBE, runs through a range of collaborative programmes which prove his institution is serious about engaging with industry for the advance of knowledge and for economic prosperity.

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Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Listing the courses on offer at Loughborough University’s Engineering School and highlighting its collocation with a range of leading manufacturing research and innovation centres.

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Directing doctor’s orders WMG, University of Warwick, is seeking industry partners for a pioneering new engineering doctorate programme which can provide a win-win for companies and students searching for solutions to real world problems.

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HVM Catapult in the Midlands Summarising the competency and research focus of two Midlands-based High Value Manufacturing Catapult Centres.

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SMEs meet academia How easy is it for smaller companies to engage with universities and what will they get out of it? Two Midlands SMEs give their experiences.

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David Willetts Interview

WILLETS’ WAY Tom Moore relates the UK’s industrial research landscape according Universities and Science Minister David Willetts.

The message is clear – government support will stand fast, but more private sector investment in skills and facilities will be needed to maintain competitiveness

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hen recession struck, Conservative ministers were taking office with a pledge to reduce Government spending. Against this backdrop, Universities and Science Minister David Willetts says his biggest achievement has been “protecting the science and research budget so that universities and the research base comes out of the recession in reasonable health.”

Science escaped the big cuts that some researchers had feared from the government’s spending review in 2010.

Instead, the UK science budget, which covers everything from medical research to engineering and arts, was fixed at its 2010

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level of £4.6 billion for the next four years.

But this is still a reduction in real terms, and while research funding has been safeguarded to some extent, funding for facilities investment has declined since being moved outside the remit of the science budget.

LURING PRIVATE INVESTMENT

With 45% of UK GDP coming from knowledge intensive services, cutting research budgets might be considered the economic equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot. But Government is relying on private investment to fill the gap, dangling a carrot in front of business through the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund.

In June 2012 it made £100m available for R&D facilities at universities on the

Midlands UNIVERSITIES

many as the lure of financial support. Large businesses have, in effect, outsourced some of their R&D departments to universities in order to reduce the risk they are exposed to.

This model will work while the UK is home to the best universities in the world. But competition from abroad is starting to challenge this long held assumption.

This year Britain has nine of the top ten universities ranked by Times Higher Education, but this is one fewer than in 2012, with the University of Leeds falling off of the list. Meanwhile, China increased its science budget by 12.4% in 2012, seeking to transform its reliance on low value production.

The amount of UK GDP that comes from knowledge intensive services

condition they find £200m from business partners to augment the investment.

Businesses obliged, with Jaguar Land Rover investing £77m in a new automotive campus at the University of Warwick and Rolls-Royce investing £40m to establish a metals research centre at the University of Birmingham. These investments account for 84% and 67% of the respective project costs.

Following this success, Chancellor George Osborne increased the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund by £200m in October last year in order to extract another £600m of private funding.

Commenting on the success of the initiative, Willets says it relies on government showing it has its “skin in the game”. In other words, a feeling of risk sharing is as important to

SHORT ON SKILLS

Skills are an essential part of ensuring that research translates into British jobs, rather than the country becoming a design hub for goods made elsewhere before finally fading completely form the lifecycle of tomorrow’s products.

A study by the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012 found that British industry will need 100,000 new graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects every year until 2020 just to maintain current employment numbers in industry.

The UK currently produces just 90,000 STEM graduates a year, with many choosing not to go into manufacturing and a large proportion being international students who cannot obtain work visas. In the academic year 2011/2012 62% of non-EU domiciled students came from Asia – a competitiveness conundrum in itself.

The old route map [into university] has been torn up and no new route map has been drawn up But despite engineering skills shortages in the UK, Willetts says he is against cutting university fees, now capped at £9,000, in areas where there are skills gaps.

“It’s not how the system works,” he asserts.

“It’s a partnership between the taxpayer,

the student, and, increasingly, business as well.

“It’s not the volume of engineers and scientists you produce it’s what kind of education they have,” adds Willetts.

“Businesses say ‘German graduates can take charge of a plant overnight but you can’t risk that with a British graduate.’ Even in physical disciplines, university has become very classbased without sufficient practical experience.”

Even in physical disciplines, university has become very classbased without sufficient practical experience The universities and science minister is a firm believer in industrial placements and, tasked with trying to do more with less, Willetts hopes that business will support him in building the practical skills needed by industry. Don’t “count the cost down to the last £1,000 but offer young people the chance to develop,” he urges.

The need for practicality is met with practicality from the minister. While supporting campaigns to bring more diversity into academia and industry – in terms of gender and ethnicity – Willetts is keen that universities and their partners should do as much targeted communication with white, working-class boys.

This is “a group of underrepresented people in universities” he says, and a segment which makes up a large proportion of Britain’s million-odd unemployed 16-24 year olds.

But entry routes to university for this, and other demographics, are changing says Willetts. “The old route map has been torn up and no new route map has been drawn up,” he states while promoting the contribution of high quality apprenticeships in raising skills sets to graduate and post graduate levels.

The minister’s recognition of new, alternative avenues to higher level skills, coupled with his emphasis on investment partnerships between government, academia and industry, suggests a new vision for UK universities. Perhaps one which is more in tune with the needs of globalised industry and calls for parity between vocationally applied skills and academic know how.

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University of Birmingham

The university recently reaffirmed its relationship with Rolls-Royce by securing a £60m contract to build a new High Temperature Research Centre which should be operational by 2015.

The team at the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences also works on metamaterials - ‘miracle’ materials which are constructed from metals and minerals, but whose precise shape, geometry, size, orientation and arrangement affects waves of light or sound in an unconventional manner. Recently, metamaterials were used to create a Harry Potter-style ‘invisibility cloak’ but they also hold massive potential for revolutionising communications and personal technology.

TAILORED FOR BUSINESS Pro-Vice chancellor Professor Richard Williams OBE talks TM through the university’s commitment to industrial research with commercial clout.

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he University of Birmingham has strong experience in taking experimental technologies to market in partnership with some of the UK’s biggest companies. The university has a long standing strategic relationship with RollsRoyce due to the strength of its School of Metallurgy and Materials.

Working with the engine manufacturer, the university developed a new technique to produce titanium alloy components for jet engines. Rather than mill the component out of titanium, producing large amounts of waste, the new technique takes powdered alloy and presses it into shape. The technology was adopted by Rolls-Royce ten years ago and has enabled the company to make more complex components using only one process, resulting in a 90% time saving and significantly reduced costs.

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Proving strong links with international science and engineering networks, Birmingham also played a key role in the development of the ATLAS experiment on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. All of the primary detection systems on the ATLAS were developed at Birmingham, fabricated on the university campus and installed in Switzerland by university engineers and scientists.

HOME AND AWAY

Companies are increasingly working with universities to take advantage of one of the UK economy’s greatest strengths – our world beating higher education system.

Universities also see the opportunity, indeed the imperative, of developing technologies with industrial partners as government funding dwindles.

“It is our role to develop increasingly sophisticated partnerships so we can work with companies to secure internships for our second year students, develop research contracts and work to mutually develop our activities overseas with big companies,” said Professor Richard Williams OBE, provice chancellor and head of the college of engineering and physical sciences.

The overseas element of Birmingham’s research is particularly focused on the rail sector through their Centre for Railway Research and Education. With 70% of people projected to live in cities by 2050 demand for new transport systems is being driven by rapid urbanisation in the developing world.

“There are forty five metro systems being built in China and we are involved in several

Midlands UNIVERSITIES

of those. Demand for metro and overland rail is very substantial and offers incredible manufacturing opportunities for research into signalling, sensors, materials and for construction projects which have been a major growth area for us,” says Prof Williams.

OPENING UP

More and more companies are separating their work into areas where they want to maintain commercial secrets and other, more fundamental areas, where they want to collaborate with universities and other businesses.

View from the end of a straight section of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator

The evidence is in Williams’ favour. Some of the most useful discoveries, ranging from penicillin to Teflon have been invented through scientists pushing at the boundaries of their knowledge rather than searching to solve any particular problem.

Birmingham has particularly found this to be the case at the Manufacturing Technology Centre – part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. This centre, where Birmingham is one of the academic partners, now works with 48 companies to develop new manufacturing techniques and processes.

Williams feels that industry has not generally been good at recognising that universities are not public bodies. “We are a charitable business, albeit an educational one, with a turnover of £540m and 6000 employees; we have similar concerns to many businesses in terms of strategy, funding, IP and cyber attack,” he says.

“Our strategy is to grow our relationships with industry. That means growing our relationships in automotive, aerospace and cyber security sectors among other industry sectors.”

UNBLOCKING THE PIPELINE

Brian Cox, celebrity physicist and contributor to the ATLAS experiment for CERN, recently stated at the announcement of the first Queen Elizabeth Engineering Prizes that by 2020 the UK economy will need one million more scientists and engineers to remain competitive.

Undoubtedly this shortfall is helping universities like Birmingham attract companies to partner with, particularly in the sectors of UK manufacturing that are performing well in the recession.

“What’s going on with manufacturing in the West Midlands is truly astonishing and there is a demand for talent that we couldn’t possibly satisfy. The job market is buoyant

But Williams knows that, by the same token, these same scientific discoveries are only recognised and used in our daily lives thanks to communication and collaboration with industry.

“My role is to connect the intellectual assets produced by scientists and engineers

We are a charitable business, albeit an educational one, with a turnover of £540m and 6000 employees; we have the same concerns to many businesses in terms of strategy, funding, IP and cyber attack Professor Richard Williams OBE , Pro-vice chancellor , University of Birmingham

due to a shortage of skills. In our engineering schools ninety six per cent of graduates have a very well paid job within six months of completing their course – so companies are coming to work with us to seize talent as it emerges from the university.”

Although there has been criticism in the media that universities should be doing more commercially focused projects and less research for its own sake, Williams vehemently defends Birmingham’s academic freedom.

“It is true that someone doing theoretical physics finds themselves far away from direct application,” he comments. “But if you look at the history of innovation you will understand that it is not entirely appropriate for all academics to be commercially minded. That is not their role. Innovation doesn’t work like that.”

at the university to the needs of society,” he explains. “We will continue to be increasingly smart in how we do that.”

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

When Birmingham partners with businesses there is a negotiation concerning who owns the intellectual property rights to any discoveries.

Partnerships generally abide by national IP standards. However, if a company fully funds all the research costs, it can normally keep the IP generated by the project.

“We are not like a US university; our role is to get knowledge transferred.

We haven’t got resources to develop IP ourselves so we want to work with partners who will invest in it and get it developed,” Williams sums up.

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Wolfson School

of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering

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he Wolfson School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering provides a rich environment for industrially relevant, academically challenging, learning, research and knowledge transfer, in engineering and technology.

Study full-time at Undergraduate Level: Engineering Management (BSc) Innovative Manufacturing Engineering (MEng) (8 company industry sponsored programme) Manufacturing Engineering (BEng) Mechanical Engineering (MEng/BEng) Product Design Engineering (MEng/BEng) Sports Technology (BSc) Diploma of Industrial Studies (DIS) Diploma of Professional Studies (DPS) Study full-time and part-time at Postgraduate Level (MSc): Advanced Engineering Advanced Manufacturing Engineering and Management Engineering Design Engineering Design and Manufacture Mechanical Engineering Sustainable Engineering Research and Knowledge Transfer with our multidisciplinary Research Groups (PhD/EngDoc/MPhil): Additive Manufacture Competitive Sustainable Manufacture Dynamics Healthcare Engineering Intelligent Automation Interconnection & Electronics Manufacture Mechanics of Advanced Materials Optical Engineering Sports Technology Thermofluids & Combustion For more information go to: www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/mechman

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Loughborough Engineering: Academically Challenging – Industrially Relevant The Wolfson School of Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering provides one of the country’s best environments for academically challenging, industrially relevant, engineering teaching and research, with over 120 members of staff and approximately 1,200 undergraduate, postgraduate and research students.

Teaching Excellence The School brings together expertise in engineering management, engineering science, manufacturing processes and technologies, product design, and sports technology, with the six full time accredited undergraduate degree programmes being regularly placed in the top of their relevant subject league tables, and six full time/part time postgraduate MSc degrees providing enhanced specialist knowledge.

Research Excellence The School’s research role is to define new engineering related theories, techniques and technologies across a large array of industrial sectors. At the heart of these activities are key UK government and industry funded research centres, with the School hosting three Innovative Manufacturing Centres, and having research funding with a total concurrent value of £50m+.

EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Intelligent Automation EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Regenerative Medicine Innovative Electronics Manufacturing Research Centre These collaborative centres are cornerstones for fostering and developing new ideas, in conjunction with a large array of supporting and sponsoring companies.

New collaboration between the School, the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham, and a number of key manufacturing companies has led to the development of the £40m Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), based at Ansty Park, Coventry (p13). The MTC is a core partner within the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult.

For more information go to: www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/mechman

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WMG, University of Warwick

Research students are able to access cutting edge facilities such as the newly opened Energy Innovation Centre, the only one of its kind in the UK, to find sustainable solutions to real industry issues

INDUSTRY PARTNERS SOUGHT FOR PIONEERING ENGINEERING DOCTORATE PROGRAMME Manufacturing and technology-led companies are being offered an exciting opportunity to help direct the research of doctoral students in order to provide technology or process solutions to real problems facing industry today.

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upported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the International Doctorate Centre (IDC) at the University of Warwick is bringing together rising young stars in the research and technical arena with sponsor companies who see the advantage in working with these ‘Research Entrepreneurs’ to harness pioneering research to increase competitiveness and achieve sustainable long term benefits.

The portfolio of work that a student undertakes is in response to a problem put forward by a company, which acts as a sponsor for the duration of the

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four-year programme and benefits from the innovative research that the student produces and the time they spend working inside the company as well as the expertise, facilities and network that they have access to at WMG, an academic department of the University of Warwick.

Research conducted by one former student, Sarah Hughes, has saved around half a million pounds a year for her sponsor company. Her work with Jaguar Land Rover had two aims: to reduce the cost of product development by moving away from the use of prototypes to more computer-based testing, and to improve the quality of vehicle systems based on what the customer wanted, particularly in terms of durability.

Midlands UNIVERSITIES

Doctoral student Courtney Thornberry presents her business case at the Engineering Young Entrepreneurs Scheme competition in Birmingham

It requires a research collaboration between a company, the Centre, and the doctoral student.

In this way, the Centre aims to train the industry leaders and entrepreneurs of the future.

The programme combines taught modules to bring students up to best industrial practice, with original research based on real industry problems, applying rigorous analysis, innovative thinking and good management practice.

Current student Courtney Thornberry is passionate about renewable energy and sustainability and is looking at Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and its applications for Small and Mediumsized Enterprises (SMEs) in collaboration with sponsoring company PTC, while recent graduate

By reducing the number of prototype vehicles needed, there was a major outcome on the cost-reduction side and my estimate is that something like £500,000 a year was saved to the company as a result of my work Sarah Hughes, former WMG student

Glenn Turley turned his automotive engineering background to use in the healthcare field by designing a threedimensional range of motion benchmark for the hip joint. This benchmark has been used to assess the effectiveness of a new type of hip prosthesis in preventing impingement and dislocation and involved collaboration with Warwick Medical School, Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Healthcare Trust and industrial partners.

Interested companies are invited to put forward research projects based on issues that need investigating either in their business directly, or in their sector as a whole.

Sarah took the results of surveys carried out by market researchers and used statistical techniques, simulation and dynamic modelling to turn customer requirements into an engineering specification. The company was then able to advise suppliers on what was needed depending on factors such as mileage and environment.

Sarah says: “By reducing the number of prototype vehicles needed, there was a major outcome on the cost-reduction side and my estimate is that something like £500,000 a year was saved to the company as a result of my work.”

The International Doctorate Centre at WMG, on the University of Warwick campus, offers the EngD International, the next generation of the popular Engineering Doctorate qualification.

Unlike a traditional academic PhD, the EngD International provides a more vocationally oriented doctorate and is better suited to the needs of industry.

Sponsoring companies will reap the rewards of a partnership with WMG’s research groups and access to some of the best teaching and industrial expertise in the world.

To find out more about the International Doctorate Centre and to discuss a research proposal please visit our website at go.warwick.ac.uk/wmgdoctorate or call 024 765 24357.

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Tailored for business

Putting world-class expertise to work in your business  Low

carbon energy and environmental technologies  Health and medical technologies  Advanced materials and nanotechnology  Business and professional services businessteam@bham.ac.uk www.birmingham.ac.uk/partners

Midlands UNIVERSITIES

HVM Catapult centres

HVM CATAPULT IN THE MIDLANDS Innovation always involves the unknown and there is no guarantee of success. But the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (p24) is a nationwide network which ought to increase manufacturer’s chances of gaining competitive edge through experimentation with new materials, processes and technologies.

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wo important HVM Catapult centres are Midlands-based – one at WMG in Warwick and another at the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) near Coventry.

Offering access to highly specialised R&D facilities, expert staff and doctoral students, WMG’s expertise is being directed at two specific research themes:

The creation of the HVM Catapult reflects a realisation that collaboration in R&D between education and business is no longer a niceto-have bonus to a prosperous economy. It is clear that universities have a vital role in applying their skills, knowledge and insights to business and technology challenges, and must be prepared to understand and react to the needs of business clients.

These two core interests are underpinned by Digital Validation and Verification technologies.

Officially launched in 2012, the HVM Catapult has grown quickly in confidence and capability across its centres thanks to real, long term commitment from government, defined in the industrial strategy published in September 2012.

The HVM Catapult is the catalyst Britain needs to secure a future for UK manufacturing. One of its targets is to see the sector achieve a 20% contribution to GDP by 2040.

THE WMG CATAPULT CENTRE

For more than 30 years WMG, an academic department at the University of Warwick, has conducted collaborative R&D with industrial partners across many sectors, delivering numerous innovations in products and processes. The decision to make WMG one of the HVM Catapult’s national centres is recognition of its ability to fuse fundamental and applied research and to couple that with knowledge transfer to its industrial partners.

Lightweight Product/System Optimisation Energy Storage & Management

Visitors tour the Manufacturing Technology Centre

Immediate R&D priorities for the WMG centre are defined by partner companies from the automotive, commercial vehicles, yellow goods, rail and marine sectors. A recent example is the development of a car seat frame in composite material with a project group consisting of WMG and three industry partners. This achieved a 50% reduction in weight compared to the current product and a software model that gives accurate predictions of component performance in crash conditions.

It was recently announced that the WMG Catapult centre will also host a new open access Energy Storage R&D centre for the

scale-up of new battery chemistries, a longstanding “valley of death” for UK innovators in this field. The £13 million centre will capitalise on the growing electric and hybrid vehicle battery market, which has been estimated to be worth £250 million for the UK by 2020.

MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY CENTRE

Not a stone’s throw from WMG is the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC).

This site opened in 2011 and later the same year it was confirmed that MTC would form part of the HVM Catapult.

MTC is among the most successful centres in quickly gathering significant numbers of industrial partners – there are now almost 50 member organisations as well as companies using the facilities on an ad hoc, pay per use, basis.

The most recent major addition to MTC’s membership base was GKN Aerospace which joined as a tier one member in January this year. British SME members include equipment manufacturer Group Rhodes, metal working fluids provider Jemtech and Brown & Holmes a precision workholding and machining company. This mix of diverse, large medium and small companies makes MTC a true hub for interdisciplinary learning and innovation.

MTC partners participate in and benefit from R&D in a range of centre competencies including: automation & tooling, fabrication, joining & assembly, additive & net shape manufacturing, process modelling and metrology.

A recent additive manufacturing project, performed in collaboration between MTC member engineers and Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital, helped to save the life of a young girl who had been seriously injured in a road accident. The team used advanced three dimensional additive manufacturing equipment to rapidly generate a replica segment of the girl’s skull. The extreme accuracy of the manufactured segment meant no modification of the implant was needed in theatre. This resulted in a shorter, safer operation.

Find out more about your local HVM Catapult Centre at https://catapult.innovateuk.org/high-value-manufacturing.

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SME Regional Focus

SMES MEET ACADEMIA IN THE WEST MIDLANDS FTSE 100 manufacturers may find it easy to fund extensive university partnerships, but what about expanding the R&D horizons of the average SME?

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he UK’s first class university system is consistently trumpeted as a one of our economy’s strongest assets. Almost all large companies partner with universities around the world – BAE Systems, for example has 30 academic partners in the UK alone and Rolls-Royce has a worldwide network of 28 University Technology Centres (UTCs) which house dedicated materials and technology research for the manufacturer at institutions it feels represent centres of excellence (p68).

But are Britain’s small and medium sized manufacturers able to access the world class facilities and knowledge on their doorsteps? Do they feel they are able to leverage UK academic excellence in

I think universities have come to realise that we can be more agile when it comes to developing new processes Matt Powell, business development manager, Barkley Plastics

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A knowledge transfer partnership brought new skills to Advanced Chemical Etching and innovation to its production process

the interests of advanced manufacturing growth?

“It’s not that companies are scared to approach universities, it’s simply that there is a lack of awareness of the expertise, assistance and facilities available to us,” says Matt Powell, business development manager at Highgate, Birmingham-based SME Barkley Plastics. “The mindset is that a university is the domain of students. But in reality there’s also a lot of research and knowledge that can be effectively used by industry.”

The [KTP] system has allowed the company to train a graduate to our exact needs

Alan Rollason (above left), chairman, Advanced Chemical Etching

Barkley Plastics has worked with Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), based at the University of Warwick, to manufacture several prototype parts. Powell says that one of these alone “could be worth £1m if we are successful,” which would be a huge boost to the company’s £5.6m revenues.

The collaboration with WMG enabled Barkley to carry out load testing on a new stool that

has been used in many retail outlets, including Tesco. WMG helped the company carry out microscopy on parts produced using Barkley Plastics’ Innovative In-Mould Internal Welding (IMIW) to validate the quality of welds.

GETTING ACROSS THE DOORSTEP

WMG was founded by Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya (p33) in 1980 to help manufacturing benefit from the research and innovation taking place at universities. The centre offers degrees in both bachelor and post-graduate level engineering and other technical subjects and benefits still displays the benefits of its founder’s wealth of industry knowledge coupled with industrial; policy and strategic insight.

SMEs, with smaller staffs than large corporations, have time constraints. And these can limit their willingness to approach universities for collaborative projects. “It was not until WMG approached us that the door was opened to tap into their vast facilities,” comments Mr Powell.

It is telling that it required WMG to walk Barkley through the door. It highlights how lack of awareness and nervousness around the time and financial commitments

Midlands UNIVERSITIES

Production Line (Barkley)

of supporting R&D work are covered ‘in exchange’ for the employment of a skilled graduate for the duration of the KTP. ACE has gained competitive advantage through its work with Wolverhampton University in more ways than one.

The mindset is that a university is the domain of students. But in reality there’s also a lot of research and knowledge that can be effectively used by industry Matt Powell (left), Business Development Manager, Barkley Plastics

Both ACmE and TiME are believed to be faster than traditional alternatives, while offering outstanding precision with sharp, well detailed features and crisp edges. Both machines will greatly increase the company’s capacity so that it can cater for increased future demand. involved in university collaboration are putting SMEs off, stopping them finding the business benefits which Barkely has now found spring off such relationships.

WMG has helped Barkley to “gain a lot of business,” according to Powell. He calculates more that £500,000 worth of revenue has been added. Supply chain opportunities have been forthcoming too thanks to WMG being a hub for collaborative projects with companies large and small.

As a member of the Midlands Assembly Network, a cooperative of non-competitive manufacturing SMEs working together to win business, Berkley is now trying to encourage more regional peers to work with WMG. “There is definitely now a focus on working with more SMEs. I think universities have come to realise that we can be more agile when it comes to developing new processes and more likely to involve additional companies in the technology.”

FINANCING COLLABORATION

Speaking about financing problems facing SMEs Mr Powell said: “Funds for SME’s are never easy to come by. The Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) is extremely good at alerting us to when new money is available

but the Government should provide easier access to finance if it aids the creation of jobs or helps the introduction of new technologies.

The UK is brilliant at developing new products and techniques, but the pathways to market are difficult to tap into.”

BOOSTING RESOURCES

Advanced Chemical Etching (ACE) is another SME benefitting from collaborative work with a university. The Telford-based company specialises in producing precision components, prototyping and low volume production.

ACE joined forces with the University of Wolverhampton to create a new chemical process for the etching of both aluminum and titanium.

During their two-year collaboration with the university the company developed what they claim to be two world firsts. ACmE (Aluminium Compliant Molecular Etching) and TiME (Titanium Molecular Etching) are new technologies that have been created by the firm and the post graduate who joined ACE in 2011 as a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate.

KTPs can be established with universities throughout Europe. They are popular means for businesses to gain long term benefit from university collaboration since the costs

Alan Rollason, chairman of ACE says: “The KTP not only involves project work, but also encompasses management training for the graduate associate. “There are two very clear benefits as far as the company is concerned,” continues Rollason. “Firstly, the strong links with the university and access to a number of professors. And secondly, the ability to call upon skills, equipment and services we just don’t have in the business.”

ACE hired the associate who was placed with them when the KTP came to an end, augmenting the company skills base. This is not a requirement of KTPs but many companies find they want to retain the valuable talent they have helped to shape.

“The system has allowed the company to train a graduate to our exact needs,” says Rollason. Furthermore, through university alumni networks, retaining the associate allows companies to maintain very strong links with the university.

And critically for a resource stretched SME, all this benefit can be accomplished with no costs beyond the associate’s wages and the time taken to train them.

Find out more about KTP opportunities in your region via www.ktponline.org.uk .

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