The Sprints of the REforMM programme

If the UK can be the leader of resource efficiency, the economy will grow exponentially, which is critical for the protection of our environment and to ensure resilience of supply.

For the UK to reach leader status, we must educate UK organisations on the environmental, social, and economic impact of the full product lifecycle. Through the delivery of five sprints, the Resource Efficiency for Materials and Manufacturing (REforMM) programme will supply the foundations to help businesses diversify their offering to a resource efficient future.

The five sprints will help to condense activity into focus groups that are more targeted to specific work. The sprints are explained below:

Materials for the future economy

Materials, associated processing, and new material applications will be the basis for cutting-edge products that reduce emissions, energy consumption and costs. This sprint will highlight the development of materials for sustainable products and the rapid discovery of new materials.

Smart design

Effective design methods, design for resource efficiency, and design for maximum through-life value. This sprint will include work on:

• Designing correct items for the relevant systems, partners, and users
• Application of state-of-the-art design tools
• New ideas being efficiently de-risked.

Resilient supply chains

Sustainable feedstocks, supply chain visibility, and co-location of waste and emission streams. This sprint will underline:

• Robust supply chains
• Cooperation embedded in manufacturing supply chain
• Symbiotic industrial processes.

World-class production

Flexible production capacity, resource efficiency with minimal material waste, high-quality products, high productivity, and adaptable operations. This sprint has begun investigating ‘technology stacks’ which are a set of technologies and associated methodologies that when combined leads to resource efficient, resilient, and competitive manufacturing production. This sprint will focus on:

• Optimised distributed manufacturing
• Optimised and adaptable production capacity
• Less waste generated during production.
• Human/machine productivity
• Machine/equipment reliability
• Adaptive manufacturing.

Longer in use and reuse

Minimal materials use and waste, practise complete traceability, and use new remanufacturing services. This sprint has begun investigations into how UK manufacturing will minimise materials use and waste through product lifetime extension and reuse. The sprint will include:

• The right behaviour to retain value
• Product value retention
• End-of-life resource recovery.

If you would like to participate in the race to resource efficiency, Innovate UK KTN is now inviting expressions of interest from those looking to rapidly find innovative solutions to tangible materials and manufacturing challenges. If you are a challenge holder looking for a solution, register your interest here by 30th September 2023.

We will continue to discuss the sprints in more detail via a series of podcasts over the course of the programme, keep an eye out for these on our Twitter.