Tue, 18 August, 2020
TWI’s Innovation Network (TWIIN) was created to help promote innovation for industry, and it is now set to share its open innovation platform to provide collaborative research and development (R&D) to a wider audience.
With an aim to unite like-minded companies and organisations, TWIIN is working to create access to new commercial opportunities, address difficult technology challenges and facilitate knowledge transfer to upskill business and personnel.
A central cog in delivering this comes through TWI’s overseas subsidiaries, which meet market demand with successful operations across the world. TWI’s subsidiaries are located in Europe, North America, Asia and the Pacific, India and the Middle East, delivering a combination of engineering-based services and support to Industrial Members as well as training engineers in a variety of skills.
Our international training services are delivered to over 15,000 trainees across 15 sites each year, while the engineering services are based on asset integrity management and include fitness-for-service, risk assessment, inspection, monitoring, testing, migration, intervention, repair and remaining life assessment as well as TWI’s bespoke TWI RiskWISE® asset management software.
TWI’s overseas presence also provides a route through which UK-based companies can expand into new territories. Businesses, including SMEs can be assured by TWIIN’s experience in delivering tried and tested methods to facilitate collaboration on an international level between companies and organisations.
Likewise, those businesses based outside the UK in a country or region with a TWI subsidiary operation, can be confident in expanding the market for products and services to other areas with the assistance of TWI and the TWI Innovation Network in the UK.
The 13 Innovation Centres that TWI operates have already delivered hundreds of competitively funded collaborative projects, developing a wealth of experience and expertise in creating new systems and solutions. These include those related to additive manufacture, advanced materials, artificial intelligence, digital twin and digital manufacturing, fatigue and structural integrity, healthcare, industry 4.0, net zero and low carbon technology, renewable energy, and robotics and automation. This experience means that the Innovation Centres are able to deliver R&D projects across most major industries.
TWI’s Director of Innovation and Skills and Head of the TWI Innovation Network, Tat-Hean Gan said, “The companies and organisations that perform best are those that use innovation management to continually evolve and expand their horizons. However, this is not a quick fix and is particularly hard for a business to achieve on its own when operating conditions are challenging, new competitors might be emerging and/or markets are in flux.”
He continued, “This is where the TWI Innovation Network (TWIIN) and TWI’s overseas subsidiaries can help, both in the UK and in international markets,” explaining, “By bringing together industrial and academic partners from companies including SMEs, RTOs and leading universities to work in collaboration, new R&D and project opportunities are opened up, and novel technologies can be developed that will enable businesses to become more robust in the future.”
TWI’s Director of Global Development, Shervin Maleki, added, “TWI’s global training and technical centres are very well established in their respective areas, with a successful track record in deployment of conventional solutions as well as development and implementation of innovative approaches to industry challenges. This has been achieved through their extensive reach and knowledge of the local market, acquired as a result of providing localised technical assistance and undertaking focused business development activity, and the support from TWI in the UK.”
He concluded, “Therefore, they form a value chain with TWIIN in bringing together likeminded partners who can mutually benefit from prospective collaboration, thereby enabling new product development to thrive and leading to expansion into new markets.”
You can find out more about the work of TWI’s Innovation Network here.