(L-R): Mangesh Gharfalkar; Dr Graham Hillier; Dr Richard Court; and Callum Campbell.

A new research centre dedicated to finding ways to ‘help businesses improve manufacturing efficiency’ has been set up as a collaborative partnership between Teesside University, the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge University, and the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI).

The Centre for Resource Efficient Manufacturing Systems (REMS), based at Teesside University, will research and investigate manufacturing processes and supply chains to ‘help companies improve production processes by reducing emissions, saving time, reducing cost and minimising the resources they use’.

It is hoped each of the three partner organisations will bring different forms of expertise to the resource efficiency project, such as the ‘business-facing expertise’ of Teesside University, the ‘research skills’ of the Institute for Manufacturing, and the ‘manufacturing innovation abilities’ of CPI at Wilton in Redcar.

Led by Dr Graham Hillier, the Director of Strategy and Futures at CPI, the REMS team will also include:

• Dr Richard Court, Research Fellow in Resource Efficient Manufacturing at Teesside University;
• Callum Campbell, Collaborative Awards in Science and EngineeringPhD Researcher at Newcastle University and CPI; and
• PhD student Mangesh Gharfalkar.

‘The challenge is to use the resources we have as efficiently as possible’

Speaking of the project, Hillier said: “There is a finite amount of raw materials in the world and, at some point in the future, some of the most important could start to run out. The challenge is to use the resources we have as efficiently as possible. The REMS Centre will work with companies to help them to understand how to make better products with lower environmental impact while still making enough money to succeed economically – in short, to become more resource efficient.”

He outlined that the centre will work to provide companies with business models to “demonstrate the real improvements that can be made and convince them to make the change”.

He added: “We want to link together a lot of different disciplines to demonstrate how whole manufacturing systems work. Even if a company is only a small part of a system, it can do things to make its operations run smoother and to make the whole supply chain run better.”

Callum Campbell concluded that although manufacturing efficiency is a “very complicated area”, there is little “solid or quantitative evidence” in the field.

He said: “We want to provide robust data to show industry what is happening in their manufacturing processes and how they can be improved.”

Resource security

Resource security and future resource scarcity have been of increasing concern to governments and businesses alike, as overpopulation and increasing consumption place strain on the world’s materials.

Indeed, according to think tank Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs), due to the current period of ‘intensified resource stress’, the world could soon be seeing supply disruptions, volatile prices and even political tensions arising over resource access.

The ‘Resources Futures’ report warns that due to the ‘scale and speed of demand growth’ from emerging economies, tight commodity markets and ‘poorly designed and short-sighted policies’, the ‘spectre of resource insecurity has come back with a vengeance’. Consequently, both governments and business should now be looking to focus on ‘resource politics’ to prepare for the future.

Focusing on food, metals, oil and water, the report suggests that due to ‘unprecedented levels’ of demand, which are expected to increase until ‘at least 2030’, the threat of political ‘overreactions or even militarised responses’ over resources could soon be a common occurrence.

It forecasts that, by 2030, demand for cereal crops could grow by 90 per cent (compared to 2010 levels) – potentially rising up to 170 per cent with climate change – and that in the case of metals, demand for steel will grow by 90 per cent and copper by 60 per cent, whilst demand for energy will grow by 29 per cent.

Read more about the REMS Centre or Chatham House’s ‘Resources Futures’ report.