Made Smarter Innovation - Research Centre for Connected Factories

英国未来的繁荣将越来越依赖于建立和维持一个有弹性和可持续的制造业部门，通过调整、重新利用、搬迁和再利用现有的生产能力来应对不断变化的供需。2020年出现的大流行影响了我们对未来制造业务的看法，特别是使人们关注在面临重大中断时交付关键产品和维持生产的能力挑战。它还加速了一种新兴趋势，即更本地化、更环保、更具成本竞争力的本土制造基础设施，能够更快、更好、更便宜地生产更多种类的复杂产品。为了应对长期的结构性挑战和大流行后的挑战，我们需要在动态和快速变化的世界中接受复杂性、不确定性和数据强度，从而采用变革性的新方法来建设和利用未来工厂。“变形工厂”制造智能中心旨在为下一代弹性互联制造服务提供平台。它将允许未来的制造业务由无处不在的生产单元交付，这些生产单元可以轻松地重新定位、搬迁和重新部署，以响应不断变化的市场需求。这一愿景将通过三个密切相关的方面来实现：(1)一个基础研究计划，从架构、拓扑、配置方法、物联网数字感知、过程监控和基于人工智能的自主控制等方面为未来的变形工厂定义原则、方法和模型。(50%)。(2)一个动态挑战驱动的应用研究计划，以解决新兴的工业需求，并通过一系列应用研究验证和展示结果，包括智能加工、生产集成3D打印和集成到普通超连接变形工厂云中的自主装配（45%）。(3)与其他ISCF Made Smarter研究和创新中心、工业界和公众建立网络和参与活动，以最大限度地发挥研究的影响，鼓励加速技术采用并提高公众意识（5%）。

The future prosperity of the UK will increasingly depend on building and maintaining a resilient and sustainable manufacturing sector that can respond to changing supply and demand by adapting, repurposing, relocating and reusing available production capabilities. The pandemic which emerged in 2020 has influenced our perspective of future manufacturing operations and, in particular, has brought into focus the capacity challenges of delivering critical products and maintaining production in the face of major disruptions. It also accelerated the emerging trend for more localised, greener and cost-competitive indigenous manufacturing infrastructure with the ability to produce a wider set of complex products faster, better and cheaper. To meet the long-term structural and post-pandemic challenges, we need transformative new methods of building and utilising future factories by embracing complexity, uncertainty and data intensity in a dynamic and rapidly changing world.The "Morphing Factory" Made Smarter Centre aims to deliver a platform for next generation resilient connected manufacturing services. It will allow future manufacturing operations to be delivered by ubiquitous production units that can be easily repurposed, relocated and redeployed in response to changing market demand. This vision will be delivered through 3 closely related strands: (1) An underpinning fundamental research programme to define the principles, methods and models for future morphing factories in terms of architecture, topology, configuration methods, IoT digital awareness, in-process monitoring and AI based autonomous control. (50%). (2) A dynamic challenge-driven applied research programme to address emerging industrial needs and validate and demonstrate the results through a set of application studies including smart machining, production integrated 3D printing and autonomous assembly integrated into a common hyperconnected morphing factory cloud (45%). (3) A programme of networking and engagement activities with other ISCF Made Smarter research and innovation centres, industry and the general public to maximise the impact of the research, encourage accelerated technology uptake and increase the public awareness (5%).