ADVANCED MANUFACTURING RESEARCH CENTRE
AUGMENTED FUTURE FOR OFFSITE MANUFACTURE One of the leading facilities in the UK helping manufacturers to become more competitive and attuned to advanced technologies and processes is the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC). What can the construction industry learn from this cutting edge institution in adopting innovative and exciting new ways of thinking?
1 When Rolls-Royce was considering building a £100 million manufacturing plant in the North East to make high performance jet engine discs, it turned to its partners in the AMRC to help in de-risking the venture. What engineers at the Sheffield-based centre did for the world-leading jet engine manufacturer may be cloaked in commercial secrecy, but the outcome was very clear: existing operating times were halved, productivity doubled and quality increased by 15%. It is productivity gains of this magnitude that have reinforced the AMRC’s reputation as the go-to place for aerospace manufacturers and their supply chain. Indeed, the membership board in its Factory of the Future reads like a Who’s Who of the global aviation industry: Boeing, who jointly founded the AMRC in 2001, is there but so too is Airbus. And now, high end motor manufacturers like McLaren and Bentley are keen to access the materials’ magic of the AMRC’s composite team.
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More surprising, perhaps, the construction industry is also beating a path to its door.
“They realise that the future has to be in smarter, offsite manufacturing where they can exploit digital technologies such as Augmented and Virtual Reality, along with robotics and automation driven by edge analytics and big data,’’ says Allan Griffin Head of Construction and Infrastructure Strategy at the AMRC. Laing O’Rourke’s David Brass agrees: “The construction industry can learn so much from the way the aerospace and automotive industries have embraced digital technologies.” Before taking on his new role as General Manager of Advanced Manufacturing, he was responsible for manufacturing capability acquisition processes globally across the Rolls-Royce manufacturing supply chain.
Working alongside a new breed of young engineers at the AMRC, David Brass and his colleagues are exploring how robotics and automation can make Laing O’Rourke’s proposed advanced offsite production facility as efficient and productive as possible. “We have been investing heavily in combining engineering excellence with digital platforms and offsite manufacturing,” says Brass, whose new factory will be able to supply at full capacity up to 10,000 high quality homes a year. “This will enable us to directly deliver smarter and more efficient products that generate economic, social and environmental benefits.” Mark Farmer – author of Modernise of Die – the blistering critique of the industry’s business model, produced for the Construction Leadership Council at the request of the UK Government, what Brass and the AMRC are doing is set to be a benchmark for the future of construction. “I am convinced that the AMRC is playing a significant role
WWW.OFFSITEMAGAZINE.CO.UK | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017