Wed, 23 August, 2023
Is your company or organisation looking to accelerate its development of new technologies and processes, but not managing to ring fence the time and resource required to make the desired level of progress? If “yes”, is it also actively working on, or seeking to get into the research and development (R&D) space for, any of the technology areas below?
- Advanced manufacturing – including smart, digital and additive manufacturing (AM)
- Renewable energy technologies – including smart energy systems, and energy management systems and processes: wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and electricity
- Net zero – including hydrogen technologies, carbon capture and storage, and electrification
Additive manufacturing – innovation at pace
Companies based within the manufacturing sector know that the transition to advanced manufacturing processes has sped up in recent years, and those that can apply digital manufacturing to their operations are the ones most likely to remain competitive. This means being able to innovate through the integration of automation, computation, sensing, software, networking and other smart manufacturing applications, all of which enable companies to modernise their manufacturing systems, thereby staying ahead of the curve and safeguarding their market share.
Renewable energy technologies – innovation for a green future
In response to climate change, increasing numbers of engineering and manufacturing companies, and research and technology organisations (RTOs), want to pursue R&D for new technologies that can convert natural resources into sustainable energy, like wind, solar and hydropower. This means focusing on ‘smart energy’ and ‘energy management’ systems, and working up novel concepts to generate electricity, provide heating and cooling for the built environment, enable greener transport modes and more. Companies and organisations who are able to realise market-ready, renewable energy technologies, can position themselves as innovators and create distance from competitors.
Net zero – innovation towards 2050
To hit the Paris Agreement target of global net zero by 2050, the race is on in the international engineering community to devise new technologies for the production, transportation and storage of alternative forms of energy. During the 5+ years since the net zero deadline was set, industry players have increasingly been coming together on collaborative R&D aimed at creating engineering technology solutions towards the achievement of net zero. This has led to specific areas of interest including carbon capture and storage, electrification, non-fossil fuel energy generation and hydrogen related technologies.
TWI Innovation Network – here to help your technology R&D
If you have been wanting to explore additive manufacturing, renewable energy technologies and/or net zero solutions within your business – or are already dedicating some R&D effort to any of these but it is not progressing as effectively as you would like – the TWI Innovation Network (TWIIN) is here to help unleash your activities!
We understand that it can be challenging to pursue R&D ambitions when there are existing customers to service, new customers to attract and the business to keep on track financially. That’s why we help companies and organisations like yours form collaborations with like-minded partners, develop novel concepts through to project proposals, and submit them to the most relevant R&D grant funding programmes. In doing this, we draw on the expertise and experience of our TWIIN Members, TWI Industrial Members and Innovation Centres, who collectively cover the depth and breadth of most engineering technologies and industry sectors. TWI has been actively working on additive manufacturing, and renewable energy and net zero related technologies, for a number of years now and has successfully delivered a substantial number of grant funded projects in relation to these areas. In addition, our Innovation Centres are particularly experienced in creating successful, collaborative applications to competitive UK and EU R&D programmes, which then enable the partners to draw down grant funding to realise their projects.
So if you are an engineering company, manufacturer or RTO – and feel there could be synergy between yourselves and the TWI Innovation Network’s international engineering community – we would be delighted to explore opportunities for technology acceleration with you. Simply send us an email to info@twi-innovation-network.com and a member of TWI's Technology Innovation Management team will be in touch.