Manufacturing shop floors are complex and variable environments that make producing components on time, on cost and at the right quality a daily battle. Businesses often lack visibility into shop floor processes, leading many to see high-value manufacturing as somewhat of a dark art.
In the high-value manufacturing sector, the average utilisation of a machine is less than 30%. Despite costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, these machines spend over two thirds of their lifetime in an idle state.
In Yorkshire there is a saying “If it ain’t cutting metal, it ain’t making money” and a lot of manufacturers are losing out due to poor machine performance. This decreases their return on investment, creates higher production costs and ultimately leads to less successful manufacturing in the UK. Even just a 10% increase in productivity would be revolutionary and allow manufacturers to make more with the resources they already have – restoring manufacturing back to its place at the heart of the economy in the UK and beyond.
FourJaw has worked with two tech companies in its hometown of Sheffield to create its technology: The Curve, who helped increase the capabilities of its data analysis platform and web application; and Razor, Microsoft experts who created a secure, scalable and flexible pipeline for extracting data from machines on the shop floor and sending it up to FourJaw’s cloud platform.
FourJaw’s roots are in the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), where the team met and the initial technologies were developed. Using the engineering pedigree available at the AMRC, FourJaw has built a deep understanding of manufacturing operations.
“Quite simply, FourJaw would not be where it is today without the Enterprise Fellowship. The blend of mentoring, training, coaching and funding has accelerated our business growth and helped us navigate the difficult first phase of our business. The doors opened by the Enterprise Fellowship to contacts and connections have also been a key resource we’ve benefitted from.”
Associated Programme
