Over the last nine months, a team of SELA’s undergraduate engineering leaders has been developing and promoting approaches to using Internet of Things technologies to increase efficiency in manufacturing businesses across the Sheffield City Region, in a bid to boost productivity. The team has also responded to the fears of companies about capital expenditure, recognising this as a barrier to adoption.
Generously supported by a local manufacturer Tinsley Bridge and mentored by Head of IT Alex Kelly, the team was able to see challenges in manufacturing first-hand. They then moved on to develop a system to monitor electricity usage down to the level of individual machines in a manufacturing facility. The SELA team recognised the capital expenditure concerns as a barrier to adoption of digital technologies and they developed a low-cost prototype, consisting of sensors for data acquisition, a data transmission device and a dashboard that displays real-time data and management information. The prototype was recently showcased at an event with the Northern Crucible manufacturing group attended by over 40 industrial leaders in the north. It received heightened interest as a simple solution to an age-old problem – hence it is already proving to be a good tool in impacting and encouraging manufacturing leaders towards adopting IoT in their own plants.
