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open-calls

National Digital Supply Chain Testbeds

Open date: Wednesday 5 October 2022 Close date: Wednesday 30 November 2022

Introduction

Across the UK, supply chains are under enormous pressure putting business as usual in jeopardy. New approaches need to be found for managing supply chains.

At Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub we are launching a world first: National Digital Supply Chain Testbeds.

The Digital Supply Chain Testbeds will involve supply chain companies working with domain experts and technology providers to build an end to end testbed that delivers on their business goals.

Central to our work is delivering real world impacts to businesses in UK supply chains. This means more than developing digital solutions but to mobilise all of our resources and that of our ecosystem to deliver value in line with three core themes:

Sustainability and circularity
Resilience
Collaboration

Whilst this does mean that we need to invest in technology solutions, it also means that we need to invest in supply chains so that they can be ready to benefit from the transformational solutions that the UK has to offer both now and in the near future.

The UK has one of the world’s most dynamic and well funded technology communities, but falls behind when it comes to the availability and adoption of manufacturing and supply chain technology solutions. The National Digital Supply Chain Testbeds will play a significant role in changing that.

Background

For this project, you’ll develop a real world operational end-to-end supply chain environment where technologies, that are ready to deliver value to users, can be tested and deployed without risking business disruption.

There are four supply chain types we would like to develop testbeds for:

New emerging supply chains – e.g. new nuclear, hydrogen, protein, circular textiles, off-site construction (MMC). This testbed should have a focus on sustainability and resilience
Spares supply chains – with a significant circular element within any sector
Electric vehicle battery supply chains – with a significant focus on resilience and collaboration
Food or FMCG supply chains – with a significant focus on resilience and sustainability

Testbeds should ideally cover the end to end supply chain but at least cover three tiers.

Our expectation is that each testbed will require up to £1.5 million of investment over a 24 month period. The Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub will provide a grant of up to £315,000 with additional in-kind investment (time and asset utilisation) from consortium participants.

The core infrastructure should be provided by a testbed technology partner or cloud provider and for the application systems to be provided by the respective IT teams or vendors for each supply chain organisation.

Benefits

The testbeds are established to create the environment within which we can test high quality technology solutions capabilities to deliver business improvements across supply chains. This means that companies will be able to benefit in the following ways:

Grant funding of up to £315,000 – Become part of the Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub initiative, leveraging £25 million investment to de-risk supply chain innovation with a grant of up to £315,000.

New technology access – Have access to a whole suite of digital solutions delivering business value such as improved Scope 3 emissions measurement, optimised inventory management, automated supply chain mapping and more.

Digital solutions for your sector – The opportunity to create a pipeline of highly qualified technology solutions tailored to your sector needs.

Technical support and guidance – Support to design and develop an environment providing access to processes, data and systems.

Schedule

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Key dates

Testbed briefing event – 5 October
Application deadline – 30 November, 11.59pm
Presentation/interviews – 09 – 13 January 2023
Testbed start date – 1 March 2o23
Testbed completed and Showcase – March 2024
Testbed operation – March 2025

Who should apply

The testbed open call is available to all organisations but in order to be eligible an organisation needs to be part of a consortium and have clear access to industrial supply chains in the defined areas.

Ideally a consortia should be comprised of, as a minimum:

Supply chain companies across three tiers
A technology company capable of creating testbed data environment
Supply chain domain experts capable of designing the testbed and technology roadmaps
Companies securely making data available in the testbed in accordance to open innovation principles

For more information and to register, click the link below to go to the Digital Supply Chain Hub website.

Find out more

Apply today

Digital Catapult is a deep tech innovation organisation driving business value by accelerating the application of advanced technologies.

Our ambition is to realise the practical application of deep tech through four interventions