ISCF Manufacturing Made Smarter Smart Factory & Digital Supply Chain Innovation Hubs: Q&A

Competition Details:

Manufacturing Made Smarter Innovation Hub – Smart Factory EoI (Expression of Interest)

Manufacturing Made Smarter Innovation Hub – Digital Supply Chain EoI

Q: We understand that Innovation Hubs are expected to develop a national network of test beds or other development environments.  Do these demonstration / development environments have to be open to access for all?

A: Yes, the idea is that the Hub will arrange access to suitable facilities and capabilities that can be used by any UK manufacturing company or technology provider to develop, demonstrate and/or test new innovative solutions.  So the facilities need to be open to these potential users and will need to have features that would enable users to run projects on the facilities.

Q: Do collaboration partners such as technology providers,  system integrators, manufacturers, academic and commercial organisations have to be named in the application with their involvement costed in the application? Time frame is tight to source and finalise collaboration for the full scope of a digital hub.

A: This is an Expression of Interest so you do not need to give full details of costs and partners but you need to provide enough detail to persuade us that this bid will be able to meet our requirements.

Q: Will the funding be available as upfront or staged payments?

A: There is no funding available at the Expression of Interest stage.  Once we get to finalising the contract with 2 winners, we will sort out arrangements on timing of funding.  Up front payments are possible, but we will need to understand the reason for requiring these.

Q: Can the funding be used for a specific digital transformation project, if the results are available as a case study and/or as a demonstration site?

A: The expression of Interest is focussed on managing the Hub and the associated portfolio of projects. The emphasis is to create an active open ecosystem as opposed to large single digital transformation projects.