Society complexity and grand challenges, such as climate change, food security and aging population, grow faster than our capacity to engineer the next generation of manufacturing infrastructure, capable of delivering the products and services to address these challenges. The proposed programme aims to address this disparity by proposing a revolutionary new concept of 'Elastic Manufacturing Systems' which will allow future manufacturing operations to be delivered as a service based on dynamic resource requirements and provision, thus opening manufacturing to entirely different business and cost models. The Elastic Manufacturing Systems concept draws on analogous notions of the elastic/plastic behaviour of materials to allow methods for determining the extent of reversible scaling of manufacturing systems and ways to develop systems with a high degree of elasticity. The approach builds upon methods recently used in elastic computing resource allocation and draws on the principles of collective decision making, cognitive systems intelligence and networks of context-aware equipment and instrumentation. The result will be manufacturing systems able to deliver high quality products with variable volumes and demand profiles in a cost effective and predictable manner. We focus this work on specific highly regulated UK industrial sectors - aerospace, automotive and food - as these industries traditionally are limited in their ability to scale output quickly and cost effectively because of regulatory constraints. The research will follow a systematic approach outlined in to ensure an integrated programme of fundamental and transformative research supported by impact activities. The work will start with formulating application cases and scenarios to inform the core research developments. The generic models and methods developed will be instantiated, tested and verified using laboratory based testbeds and industrial pilots (S5). It is our intention that - within the framework of the work programme - the research is regularly reviewed, prioritised and and flexibly funded across the 4 years, guided by our Industrial Advisory Board.

UK economic prosperity will increasingly depend on maintaining and further expanding a resilient and sustainable manufacturing sector based on sophisticated technologies, relevant knowledge and skill bases, and manufacturing infrastructure that has the ability to produce a high variety of complex products faster, better and cheaper. In high labour cost economies, manufacturing competitiveness will depend on maximising the utilisation of all available resources, empowering human intelligence and creativity, and capturing and capitalising on available information and knowledge for the total product lifecycle from design, through production, use and maintenance to recycling. It will also require an infrastructure that can quickly respond to consumer and producer requirements and minimise energy, transport, materials and resource usage while maximising environmental sustainability, safety and economic competitiveness. Building on the latest developments in Informatics, Computer Science, Operations Research, and Manufacturing Systems Science, we will address these needs with a research programme centred on the concept of 'Cloud Manufacturing', which has been defined as ''a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable manufacturing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction''. The research will adopt the methods of cloud computing and crowdsourcing. The 'cloud' allows a range of data sources within design and manufacturing processes to be shared and mined to enable process optimisation and increase responsiveness; the crowds encompass manufacturing partners, designers, logistics partners, and consumers who are sources of potentially valuable data, information and product and process knowledge that can be elicited for optimising complex manufacturing environments. The approach admits new models for open innovation within the manufacturing space, enabling new enterprises to arise without a need for a large capital investment. The research programme is a radical departure from the current philosophy of manufacturing ICT - it will create a framework for participatory contribution of information from the actual manufacturing entities and support services to the consumers and users of products. This transformational approach presents theoretical, technical, practical, ethical and social challenges that we will meet through new fundamental multidisciplinary research. Whilst there have been some tentative steps taken to harness cloud concepts in manufacturing the theoretical methods, infrastructure and scientific knowledge needed to deliver the full potential of future cloud manufacturing have yet to be established. We aim to develop a holistic framework and understand its role within global manufacturing networks through: seeking the appropriate products, sectors, scales and volumes; identifying the impacted lifecycle stages from design to manufacture, maintenance and re-cycling; understanding how new product design and manufacturing will be influenced by lifecycle data; and finally analysing how future products will be influenced by cloud manufacturing enabling local on-demand supply of components and services. Cloud Manufacturing provides far reaching opportunities but has major research challenges including: understanding the diverse resource base, both in design collateral and production facilities; incorporating and integrating customer/user intelligence; and the representation and processing of information within a secure open service-oriented platform.

The future prosperity of the UK will increasingly depend on building and maintaining a resilient and sustainable manufacturing sector that can respond to changing supply and demand by adapting, repurposing, relocating and reusing available production capabilities. The pandemic which emerged in 2020 has influenced our perspective of future manufacturing operations and, in particular, has brought into focus the capacity challenges of delivering critical products and maintaining production in the face of major disruptions. It also accelerated the emerging trend for more localised, greener and cost-competitive indigenous manufacturing infrastructure with the ability to produce a wider set of complex products faster, better and cheaper. To meet the long-term structural and post-pandemic challenges, we need transformative new methods of building and utilising future factories by embracing complexity, uncertainty and data intensity in a dynamic and rapidly changing world. The "Morphing Factory" Made Smarter Centre aims to deliver a platform for next generation resilient connected manufacturing services. It will allow future manufacturing operations to be delivered by ubiquitous production units that can be easily repurposed, relocated and redeployed in response to changing market demand. This vision will be delivered through 3 closely related strands: (1) An underpinning fundamental research programme to define the principles, methods and models for future morphing factories in terms of architecture, topology, configuration methods, IoT digital awareness, in-process monitoring and AI based autonomous control. (50%). (2) A dynamic challenge-driven applied research programme to address emerging industrial needs and validate and demonstrate the results through a set of application studies including smart machining, production integrated 3D printing and autonomous assembly integrated into a common hyperconnected morphing factory cloud (45%). (3) A programme of networking and engagement activities with other ISCF Made Smarter research and innovation centres, industry and the general public to maximise the impact of the research, encourage accelerated technology uptake and increase the public awareness (5%).

The Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre (IMCRC) will undertake a wide variety of work in the Manufacturing, Construction and product design areas. The work will be contained within 5 programmes:1. Transforming Organisations / Providing individuals, organisations, sectors and regions with the dynamic and innovative capability to thrive in a complex and uncertain future2. High Value Assets / Delivering tools, techniques and designs to maximise the through-life value of high capital cost, long life physical assets3. Healthy & Secure Future / Meeting the growing need for products & environments that promote health, safety and security4. Next Generation Technologies / The future materials, processes, production and information systems to deliver products to the customer5. Customised Products / The design and optimisation techniques to deliver customer specific products.Academics within the Loughborough IMCRC have an internationally leading track record in these areas and a history of strong collaborations to gear IMCRC capabilities with the complementary strengths of external groups.Innovative activities are increasingly distributed across the value chain. The impressive scope of the IMCRC helps us mirror this industrial reality, and enhances knowledge transfer. This advantage of the size and diversity of activities within the IMCRC compared with other smaller UK centres gives the Loughborough IMCRC a leading role in this technology and value chain integration area. Loughborough IMCRC as by far the biggest IMRC (in terms of number of academics, researchers and in funding) can take a more holistic approach and has the skills to generate, identify and integrate expertise from elsewhere as required. Therefore, a large proportion of the Centre funding (approximately 50%) will be allocated to Integration projects or Grand Challenges that cover a spectrum of expertise.The Centre covers a wide range of activities from Concept to Creation.The activities of the Centre will take place in collaboration with the world's best researchers in the UK and abroad. The academics within the Centre will be organised into 3 Research Units so that they can be co-ordinated effectively and can cooperate on Programmes.