WMG » How SME manufacturers can battle, and beat, the UK skills crisis

Building a future-ready factory: Samuel Heath’s digital transformation journey

Sat, 05 Jul 2025 10:55:00 GMT

SME Team Success Story

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Tue, 04 Mar 2025 09:15:31 GMT

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Shaping the future of manufacturing with WMG's leadership programme

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 15:56:00 GMT

How WMG’s new programme is shaping the next generation of manufacturing leaders.

Cutting energy use and costs: how WMG helped ASE’s energy efficiency

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 11:47:00 GMT

Aluminium Surface Engineering (ASE) partnered with WMG’s SME Group to cut energy costs and boost sustainability, achieving potential annual savings of up to 75,700 kWh, 15,700 kg of CO₂, and £12,000 through advanced energy monitoring, load balancing, and efficiency improvements.

Dover Clean Ferry Power: Finding the Route to Electrification

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 15:54:00 GMT

The Port of Dover (PoD) plays a critical role in the UK’s economy, handling a staggering £144 billion of trade annually. There is the potential to facilitate an increase of up to £173bn per annum as part of its ‘Port of Dover 2050: Empower Exchange’ initiative that aims to deliver long-term smart, seamless and sustainable trade and travel.

Stainless steel industry develops leaders of the future with WMG

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 20:51:53 GMT

A cohort approach to solving succession challenges in the stainless-steel industry is underway at the British Stainless-Steel Association as WMG sign up to deliver a second leadership programme for members.

Background and Challenge

Manufacturers consistently recognise the critical importance of enhancing leadership and management skills to bridge existing and anticipated skills gaps and to tackle the major challenges facing the industry. The British Stainless Steel Association members are no different and the association has seen a surge in interest from member firms wanting to develop staff to boost growth and innovation.

Adam Bradley, Director of Corrosion Resistant Materials and Vice Chair of the BSSA said:

“Leadership is not something that is taught. What we find at BSSA is that employees that are good at their job and have worked for a long time in a manufacturing firm are generally made leaders. This type of succession activity does not necessarily translate into success, because a distinct set of skills are required to lead, and you must spend time to learn and embed them. Businesses are finding it difficult to help those employees with that transition and are not investing in training because they don’t know where to go.”

Solution

To help their members thrive and move forward, BSSA and WMG worked together to create a leadership programme crafted specifically for the needs of their members. BSSA realised that the membership base would benefit from a taster of what was available in terms of leadership and development training before investing fully. The BSSA Talent Development Programme consists of two modules helping attendees understand their own leadership qualities and behaviours as well as how to lead a team to success. The programme also provides coaching and an opportunity to work on a cohort project to benefit the businesses as well as the association.

The successful pilot that ran earlier this year resulted in the cohort working together on a directory and support materials to help members better understand the food and drink and interiors sectors where stainless steel has enormous potential and application.

Impacts

As a result of the pilot programme BSSA have committed to offering members the opportunity to join a second Talent Development Programme.

Individuals will benefit from:

A leadership certificate from the University of Warwick
Expanding knowledge of products and services within the industry
The opportunity to network with likeminded individuals
Additional skills in areas such as presenting, marketing, social media, project management, as well as a boost in confidence

Benefits to the companies involved include:

The opportunity to promote their brand
The opportunity to boost their training and development credentials, which will ultimately boost productivity and attract new skills to the sector

James Sweeney, Production Manager at Birmingham based Anopol Group participated in the pilot programme after being promoted to manage a new team. David Cass, Managing Director at the firm said:

“It has been a pleasure observing James’s growth through the BSSA Talent Development Programme. Our team at Anopol are benefitting from his leadership training and networking interaction development. James has clearly grown in confidence and is demonstrating excellent communication skills, attentive process driven approaches to conflicting situations, and mature self-awareness. He thoroughly enjoyed spending time with the programme lecturers and delegates whilst experiencing new business environments. Our next delegate is ready to go!”

Liz McArdle, Innovation Manager at WMG who delivers the programme alongside colleague Steven Norgrove said:

“We are delighted that Adam and the team have decided to invest in this valuable programme for the second time off the back of the successful pilot. WMG is on a mission to equip the leaders of the future with the skills to navigate changes and opportunities in the manufacturing sector. We thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with the participants and seeing them flourish and grow in confidence. We look forward to meeting the next cohort in October.”

Adam Bradley added:

“Our hope is that schemes like this will help to retain and attract talent to the sector which is vitally important for the association and companies across the board. We are excited to witness the journeys that our next set of leaders will go on through the programme.”

For more information about membership at the BSSA and joining the programme which starts in October visit:

BSSA Talent Development Programme

For more information about WMG’s leadership programmes for manufacturing SMEs contact: wmgsme@warwick.ac.uk

A turnover and wellbeing boost at Wrekin Sheetmetal through Made Smarter support

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 09:42:00 GMT

“Working with Made Smarter and having the new system in place has been invaluable for us. It has dramatically improved our production line process and has not only made staff happier but has made it easier for us to onboard new colleagues and products thanks to the system’s ease-of-use.”

Claire Robinson, Managing Director, Wrekin Sheetmetal Ltd

Wrekin Sheetmetal, based in Telford, manufactures and shapes a wide variety of steel parts and components for a range of sectors, including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, and retail.

Challenge

Although the company were thriving in some areas, there were issues with productivity and data visibility on the shopfloor. They were still printing technical drawings on paper and there were often bottlenecks as one department waited on information from another. The company were not optimised to take on new client products due to a lack of time to develop new processes. This was hindering their ability to grow.

Solution

Managing Director Claire Robinson got in touch with the Made Smarter West Midlands programme, who linked Claire with WMG Engineer, Manikanta Ravi. Mani, with the help of Intern Ravikishore Karuppuswamy, undertook a value stream mapping of Wrekin Sheetmetal’s complete manufacturing process from start to finish, to assess improvement opportunities. He recommended they install a suitable dashboarding solution integrated with current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software MIE Track, using a network of tablets on every machine and in every department to monitor data. Together with WMG’s Denis Pelych, Made Smarter assisted Wrekin Sheetmetal to access a match-funded grant of £20,000 towards the cost of the new system which reduced the risk associated with the investment.

Impacts

The new system has allowed Wrekin Sheetmetal to devote more time to new product development which will open new growth areas for the business and will help them meet its targets to double turnover by next year
With the new system in place, Wrekin Sheetmetal are expected to grow capacity by between 10-15% and create seven new jobs
Wrekin Sheetmetal is now a paperless operation and is using data to drive decision making
Staff are highly motivated as they now have visibility of their activity, there is reduced time wastage, and they feel bought into the whole manufacturing process. Existing roles will benefit from upskilling going forward

WMG's Manikanta Ravi said:

“Key data such as machine uptime and downtime, technical drawings, and order information is now instantly accessible to every member of the team, with information constantly updated in real time.

The new system has meant the waste identified in our value stream mapping exercise, such as the time taken for the engineering team to pass on drawings to the shop floor team, has been virtually eliminated.”

For the full case study visit:

made-smarter-case-study-wrekin-sheetmetal.pdf (madesmarter.uk)

If you are a manufacturing organisation wanting to work with WMG’s SME team visit:

WMG SME Group Engagement Form (office.com)

Championing the importance of digital in manufacturing, Bridge Cheese picks up two business awards.

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 13:59:00 GMT

Telford based Bridge Cheese has gained two prestigious awards for the way it has harnessed digital technology to grow turnover to £30m in five years. Working with WMG through Made Smarter West Midlands, they have implemented a series of recommendations that have improved efficiency and enabled growth.

Background

Bridge Cheese, based in Telford, supplies a variety of cheese and dairy products to the wholesale market, with many of its customers working in the food service industry or food manufacturing. Since its inception in 2018, it has grown rapidly, achieving double-digit growth year-on-year.

Challenge

Bridge Cheese had a mission to double its turnover from £30 million to £60 million in three years. However, to mitigate the pressures of rising costs and to maximise profitability, the two directors Michael Harte and Martin Bowden knew they had to tackle the efficiency of their processes. They were also keen to address issues with stock control and production management.

Michael Harte said:

“We realised that for us to grow further, the analysis of our production processes and costs needed to be a lot better. We had previously relied on spreadsheets and paper records to monitor much of our business’s performance.”

They were aiming to create a smart paperless factory with some automation that would enable them to grow without too much additional labour.

Solution

Telford and Wrekin Council referred the duo to the Made Smarter West Midlands scheme and Made Smarter digital expert Martyn Mangan recommended WMG come in to undertake a thorough audit. This included a “Digital Roadmap” highlighting the steps needed to digitise the business and boost productivity.

WMG's Denis Pelych worked with Bridge to understand their requirements and what was impeding their growth potential. He suggested a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system would help improve real time data and visibility to better manage processes. He reviewed various solutions and providers before recommending a specialist food industry package with proven integration to Sage 200, which they were currently using.

The software and services cost was £70k but through Made Smarter, Bridge was able to access a £20k grant. During 2023 using a phased approach, the company implemented the new system which included customised KPI/status dashboards for factory visibility and decision-support.

Impacts

Now up and running, the new system handles everything from tracking orders, stock taking, monitoring machine uptime and downtime, and producing instant quality control reports. Key expected benefits include:

· 20-30% year-on-year growth expected, from £30m to £60m+ revenue in 3 years, including increasing export sales from 2% to 20%+

· 100% reduction in ‘on-time delivery failures’ of orders, plus a saving of the time wasted resolving production issues due to stock issues

· 15-20% improvement in current process efficiency, from process automation across order processing, planning, and production execution

· 10-15% additional efficiency improvement through shop floor digitisation of food safety compliance data capture and management

· 50% reduction in stock days which is around £1.5million of cash freed up to support investment

The outstanding results led to Bridge Cheese being crowned as overall winner of the Made Smarter Adoption Award for the West Midlands region in Birmingham as well as in their own area of the Marches. They represented the West Midlands at the national Made Smarter Awards on 27^th June.

Testimonials

“For SMEs like us, support from a scheme like Made Smarter is so important. As part of this journey, Denis’s role became akin to a “non-executive director” advising us in all matters IT related. We are now taking the next steps towards a digital future for our business, and we would encourage others in our position to do the same.”

Michael Harte, Director, Bridge Cheese Ltd

“Bridge Cheese were a delight to work with and are highly motivated to build on their already excellent reputation for service quality. The new system will enable them to achieve their growth ambition without any risk to delivering on client expectations. There are many additional areas that they can focus on with digital going forward such as further automation which is very exciting.”

Denis Pelych, Digital Manufacturing Advisor, WMG, University of Warwick

To find out more about working with WMG on digitising your business contact WMG's SME Team

For further information on Bridge Cheese visit: Welcome to our World of Cheese - Bridge Cheese

To read the full story and watch the video about Bridge Cheese’s journey on Made Smarter visit: Case Study - Bridge Cheese | Made Smarter

Machine learning project automates complex tooling job at Expert Technologies Group

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 20:21:00 GMT

A two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between WMG, University of Warwick and expert industrial automation specialist Expert Technologies Group has introduced machine learning into a range of engineering settings that were previously thought too complex to implement. KTP Associate Mateusz Ogrodnik reduced the time of designing new mechanical fixture plans* from weeks to minutes.

Challenge

Historically the job of creating mechanical fixture plans was deemed too complex to automate. Despite involving repetitive tasks, the processes were too nuanced for simple automations to handle, and tooling designers were still an essential component.

However Expert Technologies were keen to devise and implement a novel approach to this unsolved problem, so that designers’ time could be better utilised on higher value, strategic tasks in the business.

The key challenge was the sheer computational complexity of this process. A typical fixture plan has around 40 elements which would mean that around 250 parameters had to be implemented into an automated solution.

As part of this project, Expert wanted to create and embed a systematic approach to solving complex engineering problems for the future. With the use of machine learning on an upward curve, this project would pave the way for them to continue to use this kind of technology for other hugely complex problems.

Solution

With the support of WMG, they opted to apply for an Innovate UK funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP). KTPs link forward thinking businesses with a knowledge base to deliver on an innovative project led by inspired graduates.

Initially, Knowledge Transfer Associate (KTA), Cesar Reyes, was appointed. His work laid strong foundations and a year later, a second KTA, Mateusz Ogrodnik joined the team. His approach, thanks to experience in optimisation and software development, along with support from WMG's Professor Pasquale Franciosa, led to the development of a completely novel set of algorithms that reduced the computational complexity.

Mateusz arranged meetings with senior engineers at Expert to understand how an experienced designer would approach the problem which helped to speed up the time it took for the automated system to create a design. This was followed by building a prototype app, where multiple case studies could automatically be tested. As the number of bespoke algorithms grew, and time left to create a solution decreased, Mateusz spent time working directly with the engineers to undertake further beta testing to arrive at the final prototypes. Mateusz also attended the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference in Canada, where he was able to gather further insights for this project as well as other opportunities to take forward at Expert.

Impacts

· A final prototype tool was created which reduced the time of developing mechanical fixture plans from weeks to hours which will lead to significant cost savings for the business.

· Mateusz has been hired by Expert as a Senior Software Development Engineer.

· Expert has put new software development approaches into practice which will de-risk other software-based projects.

· The project opened up a number of ideas for other Expert employees to build, develop and share within the company.

· New software projects, including complex machine learning tasks have been brought forward and de-risked thanks to this project.

· Expert has now applied for a further Accelerated Knowledge Transfer grant to work on a similar project.

Ian Snape, Engineering Director at Expert Technologies Group said:

“To witness the ground-breaking final prototype demonstration was a realisation of an unrealistic idea four years ago. Not accepting the ‘norm’ and embracing development failure as an opportunity to dissect and optimise, is the heartbeat of this achievement. We celebrate the powerful new fusion of engineering and data science within this Expert / WMG collaboration and look forward to the next set of limitations we rip up.”

WMG Reader and academic supervisor on this project Pasquale Franciosa said:

“The work with Expert Technologies Group through the Knowledge Transfer Partnership root is great evidence of transferring academic research outputs into industrial operation. The project nicely bridged engineering design with digital technologies and proved that this is the way forward to support business growth, whilst releasing capacity and maximising productivity.”

For more information on working with WMG on KTP projects contact wmgsme@warwick.ac.uk

For more information on Expert Technologies Group visit:

Expert Technologies Group | Industrial Automation Technology

*A fixture is a device for locating, holding and supporting a workpiece during a manufacturing operation. Fixtures are essential elements of production processes as they are required in most automated manufacturing, inspection, and assembly operations.

Flux Aviation flying high as business transitions to the next level

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 13:08:00 GMT

A WMG internship to embed 3D scanning technology into the business leads to big efficiency gains and the opportunity to transform the aviation industry on its pathway to electrification.

Background

Flux Aviation is an innovative start-up on a mission to accelerate the transition of aviation towards electric power. Its technologies will enable zero emission aviation from two-seat trainer aircraft and up to 50-seat regional airliners. Its core innovations focus on electric motors and battery modules that have been designed from the ground up specifically for aviation applications. The team were recently propelled into the limelight as overall winners of the Manufacturing Start-up Award at the Made in the Midlands Insider Awards.

Challenge

Flux Aviation develops complete systems that include electric motors, batteries, and control electronics all in one package designed to be retrofitted into a range of existing aircrafts to replace combustion engines (e.g. traditional ROTAX engines).

The company is targeting direct compatibility with 80% of aircrafts on the market, enabling aircraft manufacturers to offer electric variants of their products with minimal re-design effort. The current process of building a design library of compatible aircrafts is very manual and time consuming. It requires moving the aircraft to Flux Aviation premises and taking measurements manually. Founders Radovan Gallo and Neofytos Dimitriou decided to invest in 3D scanning technology to improve the process but were unsure how best to embed it in the business and did not have the expertise to do all the necessary tests to prove its efficacy.

Solution

Already engaging with WMG through the Natwest funded Clean Transport Accelerator programme, the duo were made aware of WMG’s internship programme. They took on Design Engineer Intern, Aryan Bharmani with supervision from WMG’s Manikanta Ravi to create a series of processes and workflows that would maximise the benefit and accelerate the speed of implementing scanning technologies in the business.

Ultimately the process had to be customised to Flux’s needs and fully documented and tested. Aryan worked on configuring the scanner for optimal performance, testing it on engine bays, fuel tanks, fuselage, and mountings all at different resolutions. He designed an appropriate workflow from pre-processing all the way to post-processing scan data, including looking at ways to export scan data as stereolithography (STL) files by reducing size and without compromising quality to carry out design work in CAD software for conversion into solid bodies. Additional evaluation and verification work was carried out, as well as the creation of Standard Operating Procedures.

Impacts

· As a result of the internship project, Flux Aviation is now able to measure and design aircraft engine mount parameters using scanning technology with a deviation of less than 1%;

· The standard workflows produced by Aryan have given Flux the confidence to use scanning technology in the aircraft electrification process, eliminating the need to move the client aircraft from its owner’s hangar for retrofitting;

· The new scanning technology has reduced aircraft measuring time from four weeks to just two hours (a reduction of 99.7%) increasing the company bandwidth to deliver more client projects, accelerating the transition of aviation to zero-emission electric power;

· This new capability will enable Flux Aviation to conduct the aircraft electrification process outside the UK, opening up opportunities to sell in European markets;

· The project led to new quotations for projects worth £300k and the company are hoping to convert those as well as grow the order book by a further £300k in the next three months.

Testimonials

“The WMG internship programme has been incredibly helpful. We identified a gap in our capabilities and with the help of WMG experts and a highly skilled intern we were able to address it in a quick and cost-effective way. The programme requires minimum additional overhead for recruitment and ongoing management. It is an incredible resource for an SME like us and we would be delighted to use this programme again in the future.”

Radovan Gallo, CEO, Flux Aviation Ltd

“This internship provided valuable hands-on experience in cutting-edge technologies for electrifying aircraft, improved my technical skills, and contributed to my employability in the engineering field, particularly in areas related to design, scanning, and workflow optimisation.”

Aryan Bharmani, Design Engineer Intern

“WMG's Internship programme helped Flux Aviation identify the right talent to address its skill gap and accelerate their vision. It also helped Aryan to initiate his professional journey in the manufacturing world under an expert’s supervision, thereby contributing to the development of a skilled workforce in the UK.”

Manikanta Ravi, Engineer, Business Transformation, WMG

Notes

*Flux Aviation's most recent accolades are:

Most promising solution by Innovation Zero
Manufacturing Start-up by Made in the Midlands
Cleantech Startup of the Year by the Midlands Startup Awards

For more information on Flux Aviation’s work and mission visit: Flux Aviation

For more information on working with WMG's SME team and internships email wmgsme@warwick.ac.uk