Made Smarter: National LightHouse Projects May 2024

This call is open to all businesses, universities and research transfer organisations, provided that the proposed project is aligned to the overall project objective of promoting smart manufacturing approaches amongst SMEs.

If an applicant can demonstrate that they have more than one unique project, they can submit more than one proposal.

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. 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).

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.

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.

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.

Collaborative SMDH projects are established to create a digital manufacturing ecosystem within which innovative technology solutions can be tested to deliver business improvements across the sector.  This means that organisations will be able to benefit in the following ways:

• A grant of up to £315,000 to support the rapid development of your concept;
• Engagement and support from a designated SMDH representative and relevant SMDH team/partners, who will work with you to capture progress and share advice and domain knowledge;
• Upload of the resulting data to MDEP, allowing you to participate in and gain wider insights across the entire UK manufacturing community.