Smart design
Accelerating innovation and product realisation
Meeting the challenge of rapid innovation
New technologies bring unknown variables, amplified complexity and increased uncertainty. Limited decision-making confidence can become a fundamental barrier to achieving economic growth.
Key decisions are made in the design phase, influencing the downstream manufacturing, operations and sustainability costs of products and services. The Innovate UK Materials & Manufacturing Vision 2050 places three principles for smart design at the heart of future UK manufacturing competitiveness:
- Effective design methods
- Design for resource efficiency
- Design for maximum through-life value.
Smart design innovation network
The smart design innovation network seeks to bring together academia, RTOs, industry, technology providers and regulators to establish prioritised research and innovation plans.
The network comprises the High Value Manufacturing Catapult’s six centres in partnership with The Alan Turing Institute, Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre (AMIC), British Standards Institute (BSI), National Agency for Finite Element Methods and Standards (NAFEMS) and National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
It has three pillars of work:
- Certification by analysis
- Augmenting engineering practices
- Enabling engineering collaboration
Certification by analysis
Certification by analysis aims to reduce reliance on slow and costly physical testing and undertake more testing in the virtual world. Transforming how design engineers interact with compliance, standards and regulatory requirements will streamline routes to certification.
Our work is:
- Delivering the route to achieve certification through analysis
- Delivering test techniques and enabling infrastructure to build trust in numerical simulation tools and processes
- Developing standards to manage risk and uncertainty to the levels of traditional methods
- Establishing a body of evidence on traceability and interrogation techniques.
Interested in understanding more? Click here to request our latest certification by analysis report.
Augmenting design practices
This explores how designers can be augmented by next generation AI tools and how effective human-AI interaction can be achieved in the context of design. Human-centric techniques have the potential to transform design, and reduce through-life and environmental impact.
Our work is:
- Expanding the use of AI capabilities to capture human know-how and support robust decision making
- Maximising the exploitation of current and emerging computing platforms
- Enabling full lifecycle simulation through the use of integrated, variable fidelity simulation and innovative analysis process
- Understanding user psychology and adapting creative front end of design.
Interested in understanding more? Click here to request our latest augmenting design practices report.
Enabling engineering collaboration
This analyses innovative approaches to data sharing and model management, developing the concept of an integrated digital thread which can streamline product innovation, drive change management efficiency and transform supply chain integrations.
Our work is:
- Delivering innovative approaches to data and model management
- Enhancing change management through model-based enterprise standards, innovation and adoption support, and increasing digital enablement
- Demonstrating effective exploitation of manufacturing and through-life digital twins
- Establishing new techniques for exploitation of workflows and tool chains.
Interested in understanding more? Click here to request our latest enabling engineering collaboration report.
Get involved
Are you interested in shaping the UK’s digital engineering transformation? The smart design innovation network is looking for industrial partners to join its working groups to share real-world implementation experiences.
Or do you want to speak to our project teams to find out more about our work and outputs?
Click below to get in touch. You can find out more and register interest in joining one of our three working groups.
Working group members are required to attend quarterly sessions. Membership of each group is voluntary.