£3.8m ‘concept factory’ opens at UoN
The University of Nottingham has opened a £3.8m “concept factory” which could “revolutionise the world of manufacturing.”
Known as the OMNIFACTORY, the facility was officially opened on Wednesday (1 March) by Brian Holliday, managing director of Siemens Digital Industries and co-chair of the Made Smarter Commission.
Situated on the university’s Jubilee Campus, the OMNIFACTORY is home to a bespoke test bed floor, developed in Nottingham, that provides a unique reconfigurable environment. The floor autonomously adapts itself to the next product’s environment and specifications, reshaping itself through a combination of digital technologies, robotics and artificial intelligence.
Svetan Ratchev, director of the Institute for Advanced Manufacturing, said: “OMNIFACTORY is a unique facility that will allow us to develop, demonstrate and rapidly implement the latest digital manufacturing technologies in industry.
“Working closely with our industrial partners, we aim to transform current practices and improve productivity across different sectors by developing the next generation of smart, highly agile, and efficient factories, which will also support localised manufacturing supply chains. By leveraging technologies such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics, we can dramatically accelerate the development and sustainable manufacturing of new products and deliver significant societal, economic, and environmental benefits.”
The five-year project was funded by Innovate UK.
“Manufacturing processes have a significant impact on the environment, with a large proportion of the carbon footprint of some products being created during their production and logistics”, added Ratchev.
“By creating a new generation of smart, highly efficient factories embedded in local supply chains, we will contribute to the net-zero agenda and make a significant step towards the circular economy.”
