Many high value next generation products demand macro scale ultra precision components, with micro-scale structure possessing nanometric tolerance. CIM-UP's vision is to be the world's foremost research centre for innovation in next generation ultra-precision production systems and products with global outreach. It will foster and accelerate development of emerging high value products through its dedicated production compatible ultra precision process research platforms and internationally leading research programme. It will facilitate the engagement of the UK precision manufacturing supply chain into the future wealth creating opportunities of emerging sectors.The key manufacturing challenges that will be met by CIM-UP are the creation of a suite of ultra-high precision closed loop (integrated metrology) digital based manufacturing tools that offer a step-change in the fabrication routes for products that require nanoscale precision across length scales from nm to several metres.It is intended that process research will extend energy processing technologies, such as plasmas, lasers, ion and electron beams, and low temperature deposition techniques into fully capable ultra precision manufacturing processes. It is intended these emergent processes will be employed sequentially or simultaneously with established ultra precision processes within newly devised research platforms. These research platforms will be created in partnership with suitable UK industrial partners using a fully digital mechatronic design process. The design processes will extend; CAD, FEA (thermal/dynamic), CAM and performance verification using modal techniques for thermal and mechanical structural analyses. Performance verification will be undertaken using internationally accepted test procedures that will be verified, and where necessary enhanced, using the services of an appropriate national laboratory.Important UK manufacturing operations within biomedical, telecommunications, energy generation, aerospace/space, transport, pharmaceutical and future display technologies rely on precision engineering. Emerging fields of printed electronics and flexible displays are highly dependent on the creation of new production capabilities which will need to offer step changes in precision accuracy and productivity. The overarching aim of CIM-UP will be to realise research processes and platforms that define a new generation of rapid and effective ultra precision production systems. In this way, this centre will reconcile the simultaneous demands of 'accuracy' and 'rapid production capacity' thereby establishing advanced manufacturing technologies pivotal to important emerging market sectors. Through close interaction with the UK's precision manufacturing technology supply chain and product end users/developers, a unique world-leading ultra precision research centre will be established by two internationally recognised research institutes. This collaborative application builds on previous research programme partnerships established through earlier IMRC activities, Grand Challenges and the UPS2 Integrated Knowledge Centre. The UPS2 IKC and Cambridge CIKC will provide pipe-line translation mechanisms for the proposed early TRL research outputs from CIM-UP.

Globalization and ever-changing customer demands resulting in product customization, variety and time to market have intensified enormous competition in automotive and aerospace, manufacturing worldwide. Manufacturers are under tremendous pressures to meet changing customer needs quickly and cost effectively without sacrificing quality. Responding to these challenges manufacturers have offered flexible and reconfigurable assembly systems. However, a major challenge is how to obtain production volume flexibility for a product family with low investment and capability to yield high product quality and throughput while allowing quick production ramp-up. Overcoming these challenges involves three requirements which are the focus of this proposal: (1) Model reconfigurable assembly system architecture. The system architecture should purposefully take into account future uncertainties triggered by product family mix and product demands. This will require minimizing system changeability while maximizing system reusability to keep cost down; (2) Develop novel methodologies that can predict process capability and manage product quality for given system changeability requirements; and (3) Take advantage of emerging technologies & rapidly integrate them into existing production system, for e.g., new joining processes (Remote Laser Welding) and new materials. This project will address these factors by developing a self-resilient reconfigurable assembly system with in-process quality improvement that is able to self-recover from (i) 6-sigma quality faults; and (ii) changes in design and manufacturing. In doing so, it will go beyond state-of-the-art and practice in following ways: (1) Since current system architectures face significant challenges in responding to changing requirements, this initiative will incorporate cost, time and risks involving necessary changes by integrating uncertainty models; decision models for needed changes; and system change modelling; and (2) Current in-process quality monitoring systems use point-based measurements with limited 6-sigma failure root cause identification. They seldom correct operational defects quickly and do not provide in-depth information to understand and model manufacturing defects related to part and subassembly deformation. Usually, existing surface-based scanners are used for parts inspection not in-process quality control. This project will integrate in-line surface-based measurement with automatic Root Cause Analysis, feedforward/feedback process adjustment and control to enhance system response to fault or quality/productivity degradation. The research will be conducted for reconfigurable assembly system with multi-sector applications. It will involve system changeability/adaptation and in-process quality improvement for: (i) Automotive door assembly for implementing an emerging joining technology, e.g. Remote Laser Welding (RLW), for precise closed-loop surface quality control; and (ii) Airframe assembly for predicting process capability also for precise closed-loop surface quality control. Results will yield significant benefits to the UK's high value manufacturing sector. It will further enhance the sector by accelerating introduction of new emerging eco-friendly processes, e.g., RLW. It will foster interdisciplinary collaboration across a range of disciplines such as data mining and process mining, advanced metrology, manufacturing, and complexity sciences, etc. The integration of reconfigurable assembly systems (RAS) with in-process quality improvement (IPQI) is an emerging field and this initiative will help to engender the development into an internationally important area of research. The results of the research will inform engineering curriculum components especially as these relate to training future engineers to lead the high value manufacturing sector and digital economy.

This project will investigate and develop novel and interlinked measurement-enabled technologies for realising the next generation of factories for the "Assembly, Integration and Test" (AIT) of high value products. The vision is for the widespread adoption and interlinked deployment of novel, measurement-based techniques in factories, to provide machines and parts with aspects of temporal, spatial and dimensional self-awareness, enabling superior machine control and parts verification. The title "Light Controlled Factory" reflects the enabling role of optical metrology in future factories. The scientific and technological challenges that would need to be addressed via this research to realise this vision include: (a) Future AIT factories require product specific customisation of assembly, ultimately adapting the condition of assembly for each part, whilst ensuring assembly integrity and high process yield. The research challenges are; (i) to develop methods using accurate high frequency measurement data to control the position and orientation of parts in real-time, and (ii) to integrate semi-finishing processes with assembly, such as machining, without adversely impacting the spatial fidelity of parts and machines. (b) Within AIT factories, the effect of gravitational deflection and the impact of the environmental thermal gradient on large components and tooling structures can be significant and larger than the assembly tolerances. In such cases the dominant dimensional uncertainty source is often the effect of the environment on the parts and the structure of assembly equipment. Currently, industry has no robust mechanisms for identifying the impact of environmental uncertainty sources when seeking to demonstrate assembly conformance to design, with major consequences in terms of product verification. (c) In order to integrate, control in real time and verify heterogeneous processes within an AIT factory it is essential to develop novel metrology networks that are scalable, affordable and can be used to create measurement-enabled production processes of superior process capability, and also to verify parts. The research challenges include; the real time fusion of measurement and uncertainty data from multiple systems, the mitigation of environmental effects through local and large volume measurement, and the definition of generic network design principles underpinned by algorithms for measurement uncertainty. The project is important to the UK as the technologies deployed relate to the "systems modelling and integrated design/simulation" national competency and address the "flexible and responsive manufacturing" strategic theme according to TSB's document entitled 'A Landscape for the Future of High Value Manufacturing in the UK'. Strategically this proposal fits into the Manufacturing the Future theme of EPSRC. The review of the EPSRC portfolio reveals that this proposal is distinct from previous and current research. The timeliness of the proposal is due to its building on the latest research of the three Universities, utilising current research from NPL into high-accuracy, flexible optical metrology and making use of state of the art vendor systems in large volume metrology. The combined effect of all these factors is that the underpinning knowledge, understanding and technologies required for this ambitious research are now in place, reducing research risk. Moreover, the project is timely in satisfying the industrial needs for better factory "ramp-up" flexibility and 100% product compliance with specifications at zero or minimum extra cost for high value products due to increasingly demanding customers and safety legislators. The Research Programme comprises five interrelated Research Topics (RTs) that will be carried out throughout the duration of the Grant. The RTs correspond to the research objectives and their work packages that include deliverables and milestones.

The DigitalMetal CDT is born out to meet a national, strategic need for training a new generation of technical leaders able to lead digital transformation of metals industry & its supply chain with the objective of increasing agility, productivity & international competitiveness of the metals industry in the UK. The metals industry is a vital component of the UK's manufacturing economy and makes a significant contribution to key strategic sectors such as construction, aerospace, automotive, energy, defence and medical, directly contributing £20bn to UK GDP, and underpins over £190bn manufacturing GDP. Without a new cadre of leaders in digital technologies, equipped to transform discoveries and breakthroughs in metals and manufacturing (M&M) technologies into products, the UK risks entering another cycle of world-leading innovation but losing the benefits arising from exploitation to more capable and better prepared global competitors. The evolution to Industry 4.0 and Materials 4.0 coupled with unprecedented opportunities of "big data" enable the uptake of artificial intelligence/deep learning (AI/DL) based solutions, making it feasible to implement zero-defects, right first-time manufacturing/zero-waste (ZDM/ZW) concepts and meet the environmental-, sustainable- and societal- challenges. However, to fully take advantage of these opportunities, two critical challenges must be addressed. First, as user-identified problems in the metals industry that spans domains (from discoveries in M&M to their up-scaling and deployment in high volume/value production), urgently needed a new breed of engineers with skills to traverse these domains by going beyond the classical PhD training, i.e., T-model signifying transferable skills and in-depth knowledge in a single domain, to a new Pi-model raining that is underpinned by transferable skills and in-depth knowledge that transverse across domains i.e.,: AI/DL and engineering (M&M) to enable rapid exploitation of discoveries in M&M. Second, while AI/DL domain provides data-driven correlation analysis critical for product performance and defect identification, it is insufficient for root cause analysis (causality). This necessitates training on integrating data-driven with physics-based models of product & production, which is currently lacking in the metals industry. The Midlands region, as the top contributor to UK Gross Value Added through metals and metal products, with world-leading companies, such as Rolls-Royce and Constellium, LEAR and their customers, underpinned through collaborations with the five Midlands universities: Birmingham, Leicester, Loughborough, Nottingham & Warwick, is uniquely positioned to integrate research and industry resources and train a new cadre of engineers & researchers on the Pi-model to address user-needs. Our vision is to train future leaders able to accelerate the exploitation of M&M discoveries using digital technology to enable defect-free, right first-time manufacturing at reduced costs, digitise to decarbonise, and implement fuel switching in metals manufacturing industry.

The vision of the Hub is to create ground-breaking embedded metrology and universal metrology informatics systems to be applied across the manufacturing value chain. This encompasses a paradigm shift in measurement technologies, embedded sensors/instrumentation and metrology solutions. A unified approach to creating new, scientifically-validated measurement technologies in manufacturing will lead to critical underpinning solutions to stimulate significant growth in the UK's productivity and facilitate future factories. Global manufacturing is evolving through disruptive technologies towards a goal of autonomous production, with manufacturing value-chains increasingly digitised. Future factories must be faster, more responsive and closer to customers as manufacturing is driven towards mass customisation of lower-cost products on demand. Metrology is crucial in underpinning quality, productivity and efficiency gains under these new manufacturing paradigms. The Advanced Metrology Hub brings together a multi-disciplinary team from Huddersfield with spokes at Loughborough, Bath and Sheffield universities, with fundamental support from NPL. Expertise in Engineering, Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science will address the grand challenges in advanced metrology and the Hub's vision through two key research themes and parallel platform activities: Theme I - Embedded Metrology will build sound technological foundations by bridging four formidable gaps in process- and component-embedded metrology. This covers: physical limits on the depth of field; high dynamic range measurement; real-time dynamic data acquisition in optical sensor/instruments; and robust, adaptive, scalable models for real-time control systems using sensor networks with different physical properties under time-discontinuous conditions. Theme II - Metrology Data analytics will create a smart knowledge system to unify metrology language, understanding, and usage between design, production and verification for geometrical products manufacturing; Establishment of data analytics systems to extract maximal information from measurement data going beyond state-of-the-art for optimisation of the manufacturing process to include system validation and product monitoring. Platform research activities will underpin the Hub's vision and core research programmes, stimulate new areas of research and support the progression of fundamental and early-stage research towards deployment and impact activities over the Hub's lifetime. In the early stage of the Hub, the core research programme will focus on four categories (Next generation of surface metrology; Metrology technologies and applications; In-process metrology and Machine-tool and large volume metrology) to meet UK industry's strategic agenda and facilitate their new products. The resulting pervasive embedding and integration of manufacturing metrology by the Hub will have far reaching implications for UK manufacturing as maximum improvements in product quality, minimization of waste/rework, and minimum lead-times will ultimately deliver direct productivity benefits and improved competitiveness. These benefits will be achieved by significantly reducing (by 50% to 75%) verification cost across a wide swathe of manufacture sectors (e.g. aerospace, automotive, electronics, energy, medical devices, optics, precision engineering) where the current cost of verification is high (up to 20% of total costs) and where product quality and performance is critical.