Research centre to increase manufacturing efficiency

Known as the Centre for Resource Efficient Manufacturing, REMS has been established as a collaboration between the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) and Teesside University.

CPI has over ten years of manufacturing innovation experience which will play a vital role in the collaboration. The Centre’s director is Dr Graham Hillier, who also leads the strategy policies for CPI as its Director of Strategies and Futures.

A number of UK-based companies have already expressed interest in working with the centre to understand their supply chains and investigate ways in which they can improve their manufacturing system. Graham described their position, ​“Many companies are aware of what needs changing but are afraid to make that change. At the centre, we want to do the research that will give them the models and demonstrate the real improvements that can be made and convince them to make the change.”

“We want to link together a lot of different disciplines to demonstrate how whole manufacturing systems work. Even if a company is only a small part of a system, it can do things to make its operations run smoother and to make the whole supply chain run better.”

Graham will be working alongside Dr Richard Court and Callum Campbell as well as Phd student Mangesh Gharfalkar.

Dr Court added ​“As well as using traditional engineering research methods we will also be utilising Teesside University’s IT and digital expertise to build models and help us explain what is happening in the manufacturing process.”