Selecting new materials and manufacturing technologies represents a major challenge to businesses with implications that affect the configuration of the composite materials supply chain.
These challenges include whether a technology can be introduced based on material availability, rate/process cascade effects, skills availability and lead times. Dr Coronado Mondragon’s research has facilitated improved productivity of the composite materials industry, estimated to be worth £4.8 billion to UK high-tech manufacturing.
Improving productivity in UK composite materials supply chains
Dr Coronado Mondragon’s research investigated the selection process designed to identify the importance and interrelationships between key factors important to manufacturing in high-technology supply chains. The findings of this research served as the foundation to two major tools designed to assist companies facing challenges associated with selection processes. These were the HUB composites capabilities database and a supply chain reconfiguration software tool.
‘The HUB’ is the first comprehensive database created exclusively for the needs of the UK’s composite materials sector and covers 45% of all UK composite companies. The HUB database includes extensive information on businesses operating in the UK composites sector, along with advanced search options to identify the capabilities of composite businesses. The database fields and search facilities were informed through the research undertaken by Dr Coronado Mondragon’s team and the web interface was developed by professional website designers.
Benefiting UK composite companies nationally and internationally
The HUB database is the first of its kind in the UK, and with already more than 600 companies, it has become the major directory in the composites sector. It has benefitted UK composite business by helping them to facilitate business deals, identify supply chain partners, find materials, equipment and software, customers to target, market products, perform competitor analysis, inform benchmarking, develop patents, and provides a means for international companies to find UK business partners.
For each business represented in the database, the HUB database supports sophisticated search options on whether the business uses, produces, or distributes a range of materials, equipment/software, processes used in production, services provided, geographical location and proximity. The outcome of a search includes extensive profiles of relevant businesses, contact information and key contacts, firm memberships, specialisms and the markets it serves.
According to Composites UK “the HUB database is … a major facilitator of inter-company alliances in the UK and also plays a major role in the visibility of UK composite companies to composite companies based abroad”.
