The Digital Catapult Made Smarter Technology Accelerator has unleashed world-class expertise in the UK tech sector. We are delighted to be 1 of 14 companies working with some of industry’s biggest players to drive innovation & help them thrive in Industry 4.0. The programme has paired us up with Safran Landing Systems to help them develop a data-driven planning scheduling and resource optimisation solution that tackles their challenges of complex planning and resource management.
What is the Made Smarter Technology Accelerator Programme?
Made Smarter Technology Accelerator is a national programme designed to advance the innovation and understanding of digital technology for industry. As part of the Made Smarter movement, the programme works with both leading UK manufacturers and pioneering technology startups to develop innovative technology solutions to many of the UK’s manufacturing challenges.
Safran Landing Systems – Industry Challenge Owner
Safran Landing Systems is the world leader in aircraft landing and braking systems. Their medium machine manufacturing process specialises in a diverse array of product families requiring a range of unique and bespoke machines. These factors alongside static data, complex routings and a priority list planning approach bring a level of scheduling complexity to the operations.
Currently, scheduling is a predominantly manual process with support from a bespoke manufacturing execution system (MES) focused more on paperless execution rather than intelligent scheduling and execution. This setup can lead to delays, increased inventory issues and inefficiencies and a resource-heavy shop floor unable to react quickly to priorities.
Safran is interested in developing a dynamic scheduling system that can provide an intelligent rules-based system capable of reacting to changing customer demand. The solution needs to be scalable and ultimately assist the workforce in reducing the complexity around planning whilst understanding impact and consequences. An agile and adaptable solution to increase scheduling efficiency.
Our Solution
Despite many advances in technology, the issue of translating shopfloor know-how to top floor planning systems remains one of the biggest gaps to bridge. This dynamic, data-driven planning scheduling and resource optimisation solution tackles the challenges facing industry for complex planning and resource management. This project looks to identify the best possible planning options and make recommendations to the production for scheduling. As learning occurs, recommendations become more and more accurate and responsive to the manufacturing conditions occurring, leading to precise and efficient use of resources, people, materials and machines. Our TotalControlPro solution is scalable and ultimately will assist the workforce in reducing the complexity around planning whilst understanding impact and consequences.
Overall, from the data and evidence collated, the adaptive planning project will be a significant contributor to improve industrial productivity by more than 30% by 2030. Evidence points to recouping more than 30mins of lost production capacity per shop floor operator per day (representing the recovery of over 10,000 of lost production hours per year for a typical SME), a 10% improvement in productivity, and a 15% reduction in downtime.
Made Smarter Technology Accelerator Prototype Presentation
On 23 June 2021, the programme proudly presented the first phase insights and learnings for industry in an online event. Watch our CEO Dorian Smellie present findings here:
Minimum Viable Product Development Phase
Chosen from a total of 14 as part of a competitive pitching process, we have been selected to go through to the final stage of Digital Catapult’s Made Smarter Technology Accelerator Programme along with just 3 other startups. This means we now have the opportunity to develop minimum viable products (MVPs) to help Safran with adaptive scheduling and performance monitoring.
Juergen Maier, Chair of Digital Catapult and Co-Chair of Made Smarter added:
“We’ve witnessed every single one of the 14 startups on the programme taking game-changing solutions from concept to prototype, and these four struck the judges as solutions which could send ripples through our manufacturing industries.”
Par Eliasson, Industrial Project Lead, Manufacturing Engineering, Safran Landing Systems, said:
“The Safran team is delighted to hear that Total Control Pro has been successful in the Made Smarter Technology Accelerator Programme. During the prototyping phase we were thoroughly impressed by the team and their ability to deliver and answer our challenge.”
The Made Smarter Technology Accelerator supports the wider Manufacturing Made Smarter Challenge, with its ambition to raise productivity by 30% by 2030. We will be presenting our industry-changing Minimum Viable Products (MVP) at a final showcase event on 9th December 2021.
