Composites UK Foresight: Cross sector modelling tool for strengthening supply chains by technology insertion

The project will create a sustainable model of the composites supply chain that will allow companies to make realistic engineering decisions on technology insertion to strengthen the UK supply chain, based on real-world economic data as well as the technical merits of that technology. The underlying premise is that the supply chain that is involved in the manufacture of a composite part is not a simple linear independent entity but part of a 2 or 3 dimensional mesh of interactive mini-values chains for different industrial sectors which interact and determine whether a technology can be or should be introduced based on material availability, rate/process cascade effects, people and skills availability, machine lead times. Use of this tool will allow companies to make informed judgments about specific competing technologies, plan training and implementation programmes and create jobs that are anchored in the UK. A key objective is to ensure that technologies are introduced into the UK supply chain when the supply chain is equipped to assimilate them domestically without introducing a demand elsewhere in the chain that can only be met by outsourcing operations overseas. Project Value: £500,564.88.