Made Smarter Manufacturing: Lighthouse Funding February 2024
Lighthouse Projects will enable SMEs to embark on a smart manufacturing journey, de-risking major investment yet enabling growth.
Opportunity Details
When
Registration Opens
19/02/2024
Registration Closes
15/03/2024
Award
Grant funding of up to £315,000 will be provided to enable you to develop your concept into a market ready solution. An ideal application will include co-investment of at least 3 times the grant value.
Organisation
Innovate UK
The key objective of SMDH (Smart Manufacturing Data Hub) is to develop and promote SME access to key enabling Industry 4.0 technologies through a suite of Lighthouse Projects designed to stimulate the transition from legacy manufacturing solutions towards Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 solutions. This call focusses on establishing Lighthouse Projects that will enable SMEs to embark on a smart manufacturing journey, de-risking major investment yet enabling growth. This funding aims to support a range of industry partners (of any size) to develop large scale Lighthouse projects that will support and enhance manufacturing SMEs across the UK to exceed and expand.
Funding is available to all organisations and industrial partners across all regions of the UK who have a suite of well-established processes, solutions or services that can be adapted to the SME Manufacturing industry. Through the Digital Innovation Fund, we aim to fund Lighthouse projects that will support SMEs to embark on a smart manufacturing journey.
Application forms should be received by 15 March 2024 at 12 noon. Once you have registered your EoI the full application form will be sent to you via email.
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For this project, you must be an established UK company with a proven track record (as an established company you must be registered in the UK and able to provide full accounts for the previous three financial years). The open call is available to all industrial and professional organisations who can apply individually or as a consortium. We welcome applications from businesses, academia, research and technology organisations, technology partners and domain experts. All funded organisations must reside within the UK.
There is no limit to the number of members a consortium can have and no limit to who can participate in a consortium except that all grant recipients must be UK registered and eligible to receive funds from both Innovate UK (IUK) and Ulster University. If an applicant can demonstrate that they have more than one unique project, they can submit more than one proposal.
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We are open to any established industrial or professional sector organisation which can provide skills, support or solutions for manufacturing SMEs. Grant funding of up to £315,000 will be provided to enable you to develop your concept into a market ready solution for deployment and dissemination to SMEs.
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An objective of the SMDH is to create sustainable solutions that will be available to the SME community beyond the life of this project. To support this objective, the SMDH Digital Innovation Fund will provide grant funding to Open Call projects with the expectation that additional investment (Co-Investment) will be needed to see the project through from concept build to full commercial delivery during the implementation phase. This can include additional investment to the agreed project costs and/or additional investment in R&D. The application form will enable you to detail the co-investment being committed to the initial concept so that it can be sustained over the longer term. An ideal application will include co-investment of at least 3 times the grant value and will be delivered within the project lifetime.
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Having already developed transformational and disruptive solutions, processes, or services, your Lighthouse project will describe how you will support Manufacturing SMEs on their smart manufacturing journey and encourage them to realise the potential of manufacturing data. All solutions, processes or services must be readily usable by an SME without risking business disruption or incurring significant cost. In all cases the project must explain how it addresses manufacturing SME market needs and demonstrate compatibility of data streams and sufficient data volumes with resulting data to be shared on the SMDH Manufacturing Data Exchange Platform (MDEP).