The Centre in Advanced Fluid Engineering for Digital Manufacturing (CAFE4DM)

这个为期5年的项目旨在解决理解，创建和扩大配方产品制造工艺的挑战，特别是快速消费品（家庭/个人护理和食品）。主要目标是开发一种新的建模方法，该方法将与液体性质的实验测量相结合，以描述这些复杂的流体，并能够显着减少开发新配方所需的传统物理实验。开发的方法将提供对这些液体在工艺条件下的行为的详细了解，这将有助于决策过程，并加速将新的创新产品引入市场，优化为消费者提供益处，例如闪亮的头发或冰淇淋。该项目汇集了来自曼彻斯特大学，剑桥大学和联合利华的多学科团队，他们是配方产品研究，工艺设计和制造的全球领导者。该项目还得到了Process Systems Enterprise Ltd.的支持。该项目的一个主要成果将是工业4.0概念的示范，这将使智能工厂能够在加工行业实现，从而使英国保持在该领域制造业的前沿。

This 5 year project aims to address the challenges in understanding, creating and scaling up manufacturing processes for formulated products with particular reference to those in fast moving consumer goods (home/personal care and food products). The main objective is to develop a new modelling approach which will be combined with experimental measurements of the liquid properties to describe these complex fluids and enable a significant reduction in the conventional physical experimentation required to develop new formulations. The methodologies developed will provide a detailed understanding of the behaviour of these liquids under process conditions which will facilitate the decision making process and accelerate the introduction of new, innovative products to the market optimised to deliver benefits to consumers, e.g. shiny hair or mouthfeel for ice cream. The project brings together a multi-disciplinary team from the University of Manchester, the University of Cambridge and Unilever who are a global leader in the research, process design and manufacture of formulated products. The project is also supported by Process Systems Enterprise Ltd.. A major outcome of the project will be a demonstrator of the Industry 4.0 concept which will enable smart factories to be realised in the process sector and thus allow the UK to remain at the forefront of manufacturing in this field.