The need to embrace digital transformation has never been stronger. The challenge is how to harness digital technology to fuel innovation, agility and growth.
At the National Composites Centre, we work with engineering and manufacturing companies and digital technology providers of all sizes to develop innovative and impactful digital solutions. Working across industry, we help organisations to reduce costs, enhance their productivity, reduce time to market and develop sustainable products.
Through a collaborative approach, we bring together and partner with some of the best minds and brands in business, technology and engineering, inspiring new ideas and stimulating innovation.
Providing access to a range of 5G-enabled state-of-the-art industrial test beds we can test early-stage technologies and validate engineering transformation concepts, identifying efficiencies in product, process and technology development.
From Quantum to 5G through to composites and smart manufacturing, with so many new digital technologies to consider, we demystify and de-risk potential investment helping you to accelerate sustainable product innovation and engineering leadership.
DETI is a research, innovation and skills programme that enables organisations to address the barriers to digital transformation, inspiring the next generation of digital engineers. It will help companies identify and develop the tools, technologies and processes they need to rapidly accelerate digital engineering capabilities and identify the skills needed to embed digital.
This programme provides a secure, state-of-the-art industry environment for manufacturers, technology providers and SMEs, to explore and digitally investigate how to de-risk transformation projects. Targeted towards manufacturers, technology organisations, SME’s and academia, organisations can use existing cell hardware and/or provide their own technology which can be integrated and tested through industry use cases.
Delivered in partnership with the NCC and UWE, Made Smarter West of England is a West of England Combined Authority Programme designed to assist local manufacturing SME’s to understand and overcome operational challenges through digital technologies. This will help them to innovate, create new opportunities in the process, boosting productivity, and more customer value.
The hub is digitally enabling the supply chain in the UK to ensure resilience and reshoring of capabilities. Secure enterprise systems and IOT technologies will be baselined and supplier trained and integrated into systems which enhance operational efficiency and sustainability to services.
Towards Product Certification by Analysis is a collaborative project that aims to identify and take critical early steps towards accelerating these capabilities in the UK. At its heart is a unique team of experts from industry, regulators, universities and the HVM Catapult network and Catapult Centres, tasked with developing an innovative overall product certification framework to feed into a roadmap, collating best practice, and identifying the digital ecosystem needed to deliver this transformation.
5G-Encode explores the use of 5G applications in the manufacturing industry. The NCC hosts a state-of-the-art, private 5G-enabled network. The project is partially funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport of the UK Government as part of their 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme. The project is one of the UK Government’s biggest investment in 5G for manufacturing to date.
Developing quantum-safe communications solutions for modern data centres that enable users to securely and remotely access data, secured against computing attacks. Within the programme, the NCC’s state-of-the-art 5G enabled industrial test beds will be used to generate real-world data to test and demonstrate how a quantum computer could be used to solve industrial challenges.
Using digital tools, including embedded sensor technology, the NCC team designed and manufactured a sustainable seat for Paralympic Champion Emma Wiggs MBE by reducing material in low-stress areas and increasing critical support where needed.
NCC engineering experts have successfully developed a proof-of-concept machine learning tool that has the potential to drastically speed up the analysis of non-destructive testing (NDT).
The NCC is advancing the knowledge required to establish a dynamic UK supply chain, investing in hydrogen pressure vessel research and development to seed manufacture in the UK, progressing the technology to help it to remain competitive in the future.
The NCC selected INSPHERE to be a participant in the NCC Smart Factory Innovation Hub (SFIH) programme. Providing the company with access to its state-of-the art, secure 5G enabled virtual and physical test bed and sandpit environment, the NCC worked with Insphere to test its newly launched IONA System in the Smart Factory Innovation Hub Test Bed which concentrates on the Automated Preforming Cell (APC).
Presenting nine key results, Digital Now introduces industry firsts including the DETI digital eco-meter which allows engineers to visualise the carbon footprint during manufacture of a composite product, such as a carbon fibre aircraft wing or car component.
The UK’S fastest and most powerful supercomputer, located at the University of Bristol, is now officially online, with pioneering technology helping to make the UK a world leader in artificial intelligence.
Details of a £225m investment from the Government to create the UK’s fastest supercomputer at the University of Bristol have been announced. To be known as Isambard-AI, it will be 10 times more powerful than the UK’s current fastest supercomputer and among the most powerful in the world when it opens at the NCC.
NCC has created a unique concept design tool that optimises hydrogen cryogenic tank designs according to a customer’s specific requirements. It will help manufacturers identify the right designs to take forward to the detailed design phase, thereby lowering the barrier to entry for businesses wanting to build their capabilities in composites for the new hydrogen economy.
