Creating a sustainable future for UK manufacturing
UK manufacturing is facing a dual crisis: an aging workforce and a critical shortage of new trainees entering the sector. For many businesses, particularly in high-growth areas like aerospace, skills shortages are no longer a future risk - it is a current bottleneck that makes hitting required rates of production nearly impossible.
Automation is the answer to both of these challenges. It’s no coincidence that the countries with the highest manufacturing outputs in the world are also the most highly automated.
Unlocking productivity gains at scale and pace
At the AMRC, we see automation not just as a technical upgrade but as the essential driver of sustainable growth. We develop automated solutions that create a measurable change in your capability, allowing you to optimise productivity rates, quality and processes.
- Increase productivity: We focus on the high-level business value of automation to help you meet your manufacturing targets, improve quality and processes. By applying automated and smart systems we can transform your facility from a manual-heavy operation into a high-output, competitive smart manufacturing environment.
- Support at every stage: We de-risk the transition to robotics no matter the size of the business. Our world-class facilities allow you to test and validate automated systems up to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) seven, ensuring your investment is proven before it hits your shop floor.
- Empowering your people: By automating repetitive and menial tasks, we help you redirect your existing workforce toward more meaningful, high-value roles - directly addressing the labour shortage while improving staff retention.
Key capabilities
We’re constantly researching ways to add to robots so they can do more and more. From AI and machine learning to research into tactile hands and humanoid robots, we’re creating the future of robotics.
We take commercially available automation solutions and adapt them for your business, allowing you to carry out machining and assembly tasks with greater accuracy, speed and dexterity than possible with just humans.
Using off-the-shelf vision systems, we can conduct automated inspection of your parts or processes, improving your robots’ accuracy and identifying defects in assembly.
We are researching how to improve fidelity in digital twins and create simulation environments and software that can support your automated processes as realistically as possible.
Humans will always be part of the process, and your staff need to be able to work with robots effectively. We’re exploring how robots and humans can work together in a safe environment, looking at collaborative application robotics and mobile platform automation.
We use industrial machine teaching to improve the accuracy of robots, from automated placement of parts to improving processes with lasers.
We build automation cells to UK industry standards and provide documentation to help you take it through regulations and actually put it on the shop floor. We're constantly looking at machinery directives and legislation, and we work with the bodies that regulate this area.
For your process to work efficiently, it’s vital to understand and control how robots interact with each other. Alongside traditional machine control, we are looking at how AI can control your process and predict what will happen next — so you can avoid problems before they happen.
Make automation work for your business
We work with companies of all sizes to develop automated solutions to their challenges. If you want your product made better, faster, cheaper or with less waste — we can help.
Drawing on our vast network of industrial partners, we’ll develop or demonstrate an automated system that works for your business. By testing solutions and ensuring they’re right for you, we take the risk out of introducing robotics to your manufacturing process.
Whatever your business size, we can help. We developed a robotic countersinking process for BAE Systems that saved them millions of pounds. We built a machine for cleaning and sealing aerospace parts which is now in use by Airbus. And we helped local SME Footprint Tools increase their production of builders’ line pins by integrating a secondhand robot into their assembly line.
Optimise your process
Speak to our experts about using automation to improve your processes.