How can we help?

Our support fits into three key categories:

• raising awareness of new tools, techniques, and industry best practice through demonstrations, workshops, and collaboration networks
• collaborative, fixed-term, challenge-specific projects
• collaborative R&D within a consortium
  

Our performance: WMG High Value Manufacturing Catapult centre: 2012 - 2017

Some of our major projects

We are currently delivering a Catapult Reach Programme, funded by Innovate UK. This programme aims to support UK-based manufacturing SMEs in developing new innovative products and processes.

Our Product Innovation Accelerator project, part funded by the European Regional Development Fund, provides assistance to manufacturing SMEs within Coventry & Warwickshire and the Black Country. It was developed to help these businesses create and test new products, improve their manufacturing processes and access innovation at WMG.

We’re also involved in a Coventry and Warwick LEP project, based on a three-year, £1.15 million investment in equipment through our Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Centre (AMMC). This project allows SMEs within the Coventry & Warwick LEP area to benefit from specialist University support to help them accelerate new product development within their business.

Additional support programmes

WMG Create, Test and Launch (CTL) programme

Your business is doing well, but you need to explore and understand the potential disruptors that could challenge your future - perhaps some may offer great opportunities, but also some potential threats that could compromise the long term sustainability of your business unless they are understood and addressed in a timely manner.

What if you could take you and your leadership team through a practical and efficient process that would challenge your current views, help you evaluate and update your business model and create opportunities for immediate improvement actions - opportunities to scale up, improve profitability, reduce risk and improve future sustainability?

WMG's Create, Test and Launch (CTL) programme aims to address this need through a design thinking and lean start-up based approach, enabling companies to reduce their time to market, minimise required investment and other risks and maximise their chances of a successful outcome.

How the programme is configured:



The following endorsement statement from James Lister & Sons Limited typifies some of the positive benefits gained from our CTL programme:
"The ability to capture our whole perception of the business in such a coherent way has been really quite useful and I want to go away and process that more. I've definitely got a better understanding of my own business even though I thought I knew it, now that I can see it all written out."
Peter Davies, Chief Executive, James Lister & Sons Limited

To register your interest in the WMG CTL programme, please send an email to wmgsme@warwick.ac.uk or contact the WMG SME Group on 02476 574 299.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

Being fully aware of the challenges facing many businesses in accessing technical expertise and appropriately skilled staff to address critical business issues, WMG can offer further support through a Government sponsored Knowledge Transfer Partnership.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) is an established UK-wide programme that helps businesses improve their competitiveness and productivity through the better use of knowledge, technology and skills that reside within the UK Knowledge Base.

The KTP programme is centred on a business forming a partnership with a UK-based academic or research-focused organisation, that recruits a graduate (known as the KTP Associate) to deliver an innovation project. KTP projects can last between 12 and 36 months, depending on the type of project and specific needs of the business.

The amount you contribute will depend on the size of your company, in addition to the scale and length of the agreed project. Typically, SMEs contribute a third of the costs (annual average contribution approximately £30,000), whilst larger organisations usually pay half (annual average contribution of £45,000).

Please contact our Collaboration and Partnerships Team on 02476 574 299 to discuss how a KTP could help improve your business.