01/01/2006
January 2006: Boeing approves ATS membership of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre
The focus of the AMRC has expanded from studying design, engineering and tooling techniques to investigating ways to improve manufacturing and business processes. ATS’ role as a member of the AMRC will be to share knowledge and ideas on how to apply Manufacturing Intelligence Software (MI) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). ATS’ key area of competence is machine data acquisition and analysis, providing information for research engineers to draw conclusions. With MES ATS bridges the gap between production facilities and the boardroom. Main focus is presenting operators, managers and executives with real-time structured production data, enabling them to make decisions based on facts.
For the last 2 years, Mike James, Group Managing Director of ATS, has been leading an ATS team involved in a Shop Floor IT project to design, implement and support systems at Rolls-Royce Aerospace factories. Mr. James has been leading this initiative to investigate ways to improve manufacturing processes and strengthen the enterprise’s Business Improvement, Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma (quality methods for manufacturers to become “best in class”, with minimal defects per million units or operations).
The University’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and Boeing have engaged in a multi-million partnership including Rolls-Royce, intended to build on the shared scientific excellence, expertise and technological innovation of the world’s leading aerospace companies and the world-class research centre at the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Engineering.
The AMRC’s Vision is to become a world-class global research facility developing innovative and advanced technology solutions for advanced materials forming. Building upon Sheffield’s historic and indigenous expertise in metal development and processing, the University, Boeing and the AMRC are also keen to now build upon their internationally acknowledged research into other materials such as composites. Novel and new materials will form an integral part within the development of Boeing’s new generation planes.
Mike James, Group Managing Director of ATS about this decision: “We see sharing knowledge as a crucial element in world-class manufacturing. The research completed at the AMRC will be shared with the partners and will stimulate engineers, developers, managers and executives to ‘think out of the box’ to dramatically reduce manufacturing costs and improve quality.”
Professor Keith Ridgway, Research Director leading the AMRC commented that the next step at the AMRC “is to build a complete “aerospace factory” to test new research techniques in a real world environment and introduce advanced, efficient and effective manufacturing processes.“
Chris Biddle, Head of Shop Floor Systems at Rolls-Royce, initiated the membership application of ATS, “We felt that the researchers at the AMRC would benefit from working with a specialist Shop Floor IT partner to automate data acquisition and analysis, accelerating research and assisting our machine suppliers to deliver IT enabled equipment.
Note to Editors:
The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) with Boeing is a L15million partnership, which builds on the shared scientific excellence, expertise and technological innovation of the world’s leading aerospace company, Boeing, and world-class research within the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Engineering. It develops innovative and advanced technology solutions for materials forming, metal working and castings. It also has internationally acknowledged research in the field of composite materials, an area crucial to the development of Boeing’s new generation planes. For further information about the AMRC please contact Timothy Scherer, PR and Communication Manager for the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre by phone at (+44) (0)114 - 222 7676, by web http://www.amrc.co.uk/ or e-mail at t.scherer@amrc.co.uk
Boeing: With a heritage that mirrors the first 100 years of flight, the Boeing Company provides products and services to customers in 145 countries and employs 156,000 people in 70 countries. Boeing has been the premier manufacturer of commercial jetliners for more than 40 years, and is a global market leader in military aircraft, satellites, missile defence, human space flight, and launch systems and services. Total company revenues for 2003 were $50.5 billion.
The University of Sheffield is one of the UK’s leading and largest universities, and a member of the Russell Group. With its reputation for world-class research excellence across a wide range of disciplines, it has well-established research partnerships with a number of universities both in the UK and abroad, as well as with many leading UK and global companies.
Rolls Royce operates in four global markets - civil aerospace, defense aerospace, marine and energy. It is investing in technology and capability that can be exploited in these sectors to create a competitive range of products. The company now has a total of 54,000 gas turbines in service worldwide. Rolls-Royce aerospace has a broad customer base comprising more than 500 airlines, 4,000 corporate utility, aircraft and helicopter operators, 160 armed forces and more than 2,000 marine customers, including 70 navies. The annual total sales are nearly L6 billion.
The full press release is available for download in English, Dutch, German and French:
