Digital Supply Chain Programme: Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub
Creating a virtual hub, data observatory and network of industrial living labs to optimise information flows across manufacturing supply chains.
BMT (Blow Moulding Technologies) partners with leading brands to unlock opportunities created by rapid technological change and the evolving digital landscape. Combining deep industry expertise with strong commercial insight, BMT develops practical solutions that help manufacturers improve performance and respond to changing market demands.
As a technology provider to the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods sector, BMT specialises in Digital Twin solutions that combine physical measurement, advanced simulation and optimisation. Its approach is built around a simple framework: Measure, Digitise, Execute. By capturing reliable data and turning it into actionable digital models, BMT helps manufacturers improve production performance, accelerate product development, reduce waste and lower environmental impact.
Digital Twin technology sits at the centre of this approach, enabling organisations to move from understanding how their processes operate to predicting and optimising how they could perform. BMT’s work with Digital Catapult and the UK Digital Twin Centre builds on earlier experience through the Smart Nano Programme, which provided valuable insight into Digital Twin development and deployment.
The Challenge: Building Digital Twins on reliable operational data
Many manufacturing processes have evolved over decades and continue to deliver acceptable results, but organisations often lack the detailed data needed to understand why processes perform as they do or why problems occur.
For packaging manufacturers, temperature variation during bottle production can affect product quality, material usage, production efficiency and sustainability. Without accurate measurement, manufacturers can struggle to optimise processes, validate simulations or confidently introduce improvements. This highlights a wider challenge in Digital Twin adoption: organisations can place significant emphasis on modelling, visualisation and analytics without first establishing a reliable physical data foundation.
As Dr Ross Blair, Head of Engineering at BMT, explains: “If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”
The Demonstrator: Connecting physical measurement with digital simulation
At the UK Digital Twin Centre, BMT is showcasing THERMOSCAN, the technology on which the company was founded. THERMOSCAN provides the measurement layer of BMT’s Measure, Digitise, Execute framework, capturing the temperature profile of plastic preforms before they are heated and transformed into bottles.
The demonstrator shows how a digitally optimised bottle manufacturing process can be translated into a repeatable temperature “fingerprint” and applied consistently on the production line. By connecting real-world measurements with simulation, it creates a direct link between virtual optimisation and physical production.
This demonstrates the importance of accurate physical data in making Digital Twins useful in practice. Rather than simply monitoring existing operations, the approach enables manufacturers to test and optimise potential changes before implementing them on the production line.
Digital Twin in Action: Turning measurement into manufacturing insight
Temperature data collected through THERMOSCAN is fed directly into digital simulations of the bottle-blowing process, ensuring that models remain grounded in real operating conditions. This allows manufacturers to validate simulation accuracy and use the resulting insights to support decisions around product development, material usage, production efficiency and sustainability.
The approach can support lightweight bottle design, faster development cycles, lower production costs, reduced carbon emissions and greater manufacturing consistency and quality. More importantly, it demonstrates how Digital Twins can move beyond operational monitoring towards predictive analysis and optimisation.
Solving Industry Challenges: A measurement-led approach
The THERMOSCAN demonstrator addresses a challenge that extends beyond packaging: the need for reliable operational data to underpin effective Digital Twin deployment.
BMT’s Measure, Digitise, Execute methodology provides a structured route from physical measurement through to digital insight and operational action. By grounding models in real-world data, organisations can build greater confidence in simulation outputs and use them to make informed decisions.
The approach is particularly relevant to packaging manufacturers, brand owners, converters and material suppliers looking to bring products to market more quickly while maintaining quality and controlling costs. However, its application extends beyond packaging. BMT has begun applying the methodology in defence through work on lightweight personal body armour, where physical prototyping can be expensive, destructive and time-consuming, with further opportunities across maritime, aerospace and advanced manufacturing.
Development Journey: Demonstrating the value of measurement-led Digital Twins
For BMT, one of the biggest challenges has been industry adoption rather than technical development. Many manufacturers have historically relied on established operational knowledge, making the shift towards measurement-based optimisation one that requires education, engagement and clear evidence of value.
As interest in Digital Twins, predictive technologies and advanced analytics has grown, so too has recognition of the range of potential applications. Organisations are using the technology not only to support quality control, but also to reduce development timelines, improve sustainability and accelerate innovation. This has reinforced the importance of a flexible approach that can address different business objectives while remaining grounded in accurate physical measurement.
Collaborating with Digital Catapult and the UK Digital Twin Centre
As BMT’s Digital Twin capabilities have matured, Digital Catapult and the UK Digital Twin Centre has provided a valuable environment in which to demonstrate THERMOSCAN, share expertise and explore new applications.
The Centre creates opportunities for BMT to engage with industry stakeholders, develop partnerships across emerging sectors and demonstrate how measurement-led Digital Twin approaches can be adapted to different operational challenges. It also provides a platform for organisations to see how digital technologies can move from demonstration into practical application.
Supporting the UK Digital Twin ecosystem
The THERMOSCAN demonstrator aligns with the UK Digital Twin Centre’s focus on cyber-physical systems by providing a direct connection between physical operations and digital analysis.
Physical measurements are captured from the manufacturing process, converted into data and used within simulations to generate insights that can inform operational decisions. This connection between the physical and digital worlds is central to BMT’s approach and demonstrates how Digital Twins can deliver measurable business value while remaining grounded in operational reality.
Lessons for Businesses
- For organisations beginning their Digital Twin journey, BMT’s experience highlights the importance of starting with a clearly defined use case and reliable physical data. Advanced analytics, simulation and AI can provide significant value, but only when they are supported by accurate information from the real world.
- BMT’s approach is therefore to build confidence through measurement and validation, demonstrate value through focused applications and maintain a clear connection between digital insights and measurable business outcomes.
Looking Ahead: Expanding measurement-driven Digital Twin capabilities
BMT continues to develop both the physical and digital elements of the THERMOSCAN platform, with a focus on increasing automation, expanding data collection, reducing friction in operational deployment and improving the speed and accuracy of simulation.
The company is also exploring applications across defence, maritime, aerospace and advanced manufacturing, building on the wider potential of its Measure, Digitise, Execute methodology. The ambition is not simply to help organisations build Digital Twins, but to help them develop solutions that are practical, effective and capable of delivering sustained value.
Impact and Opportunities
The THERMOSCAN demonstrator has given BMT a platform to showcase its expertise beyond the packaging sector and engage with organisations across a range of industries. Through the UK Digital Twin Centre and associated innovation programmes, these conversations are creating opportunities for collaboration, technology transfer and further growth. The demonstrator also provides a practical example of how organisations can approach Digital Twin adoption: starting with reliable physical measurement, connecting that data to digital models and using the resulting insight to support real-world decisions.