The Materials Processing Institute is to play a leading role in a £10 million digitalisation project that ‘has the potential to transform UK industry’.
The Teesside-based research and innovation centre will work alongside Liberty Steel Group’s Hartlepool Pipes mill, Stocksbridge-based Liberty Speciality Steels, Warwickshire-based Shiftec and Nottingham-based TSC Simulation to create ‘digital twins’ of the plants in order to demonstrate the “huge advances that can be achieved within the production process”.
The project will seek to highlight the benefits of introducing Industrial Digital Technologies (IDT) to the steel sector — and others.
The two-year project, which is worth £2 million to the Institute, is being funded by Innovate UK through its Manufacturing Made Smarter Challenge, which is part of the Government’s larger Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) uses IDT to enable the recording and analysis of data across machines for continuous improvement, creating a more cost-effective, efficient, flexible and faster process.
The Institute will undertake an initial pilot project using its Normanton Steel Plant to assess and improve the IDT before it is applied to the production processes operated by Liberty Steel Group.
The project will focus on using camera and imaging technologies in conjunction with intelligent processing and machine learning.
Chris Oswin, who leads the Institute’s Digital Technologies Group, said: “The real challenge in adopting smart technology is how it can be retro-fitted to improve the performance of existing plant. While this project is centred on the metals sector, it can easily be applied to any process where digital imaging can be linked to machine learning and intelligent process control.
“The three sites involved will act as demonstrators for IDT and enable the lessons learned to be shared across other foundation sectors; these include energy, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and the process industries.”