The EPSRC Centre for Industrial Sustainability has published its fourth Annual Review of Centre activities and outcomes from September 2014 to September 2015.  The report includes 10 new sustainable business tools developed by Centre researchers during the past year and updates on 10 additional tools included in previous reports as well as updates on research, policy, cohort, and outreach activities. The report can be downloaded from the Centre's website here.

We are pleased to announce the dates of the Fifth Annual Conference of the Centre for Industrial Sustainability on 7 - 8 July 2016 at Churchill College, Cambridge. New this year will be a pre-conference symposium on Sustainable Business Models at the IfM on the afternoon of 6 July followed by dinner that evening. Registration for the conference and symposium will open in January 2016.

The Manufacturing Commission has launched its most recent inquiry report, 'Industrial Evolution: Making British Manufacturing Sustainable', in Parliament on 27 October 2015. The Inquiry which was co-chaired by Chi Onwurah MP and Prof Steve Evans, was seeking to understand how UK manufacturing can achieve long-term economic, environmental and social sustainability and is looking at government’s role in this. More information about the report can be found here. 

As the task force is due to meet to discuss the planned mothballing of Tata Steel operations in Scotland, Steve Evans discusses UK industrial strategy on the Today programme on Radio 4 at 8.51am on Thursday 29 October.  Listen again here.

On September 18 the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) announced the much anticipated call for applications for up to £10 million of funding over seven years for Future Manufacturing Research Hubs. The Centre for Industrial Sustainability will be submitting an outline application with Hub Bid partners.  Key to the proposal will be the outcome of the research landscaping exercise which the Centre has conducted throughout the year. The vision for the future landscape developed with input from multiple UK manufacturers has already identified eight great sustainability challenges for UK industry to 2030. More detailed analysis and information from the exercise has been made available to funding bodies and will be more widely available in the New Year.

Steve Evans and Maria Holgado attended the kick-off meeting for the “Energy and resource management systems for improved efficiency in the process industries” (MAESTRI) project in Brussels on 10th September.  MAESTRI is a four-year project funded by the European Commission through the Horizon 2020 programme. MAESTRI project brings together 15 organisations from 5 different countries to contribute to the adoption of energy and resource efficiency improvement strategies in process industries by creating both concepts and tools which will be tested in four real industrial settings. [more]

Dr Doroteya Vladimirova with colleagues Dr Dai Morgan, Dr Maria Holgado and PhD researcher Sudhir Rama Murthy led 2-day workshops with Altro’s top management team on the company site in Letchworth. This engagement brought the Centre’s work on sustainable business models into a collaborative enquiry about future business opportunities for Altro.

Heraeus Noblelight UK top management worked with Dr Doroteya Vladimirova and Dr Maria Holgado to investigate new business models in high-tech industries using the Centre sustainable business model tools.

The winners of the Innovate UK Circular Economy: Business Models funding competition for feasibility studies were introduced to the Centre’s sustainable business model tools by Prof Steve Evans and Dr Doroteya Vladimirova at the IUK awarded projects kick-off workshop in Swindon.

In total 37 companies have been exposed to the centre's sustainable business model tools through group workshops or individual interaction with the tools in the past four months alone. For more information about our sustainable business model tools and workshops contact Dr Doroteya Vladimirova at dkv21@cam.ac.uk.

We are pleased to announce the dates for the 2016 annual cohort retreat, 18 - 22 January.  The retreat will be held at our home from home, Losehill Hall YHA in the Peak District. The cohort retreat is the largest Centre gathering outside the annual conference, where staff, students and members come together to look at the challenges emerging in manufacturing and explore their role in navigating them. [more]

Congratulations to Centre doctoral researcher, Kirsten Van Fossen, who has won World Rowing’s 2015 Parmigiani Spirit Award.  Kirsten has just returned from several months of research in the States on sustainable business models to improve nutrition and health, looking at collaboration between the food and health care sectors. [more] 

Can card games facilitate learning within a factory?  Centre researcher, Dr Mélanie Despeisse has shown that they can. Mélanie started developing a card game in the summer of 2014 to bring forward some of the key practices to improve resource efficiency in manufacturing operations. Early concepts for the game emerged after completion of the THERM project (2010-2012, www.therm-project.org), looking at factory modelling and simulation to identify improvement opportunities. [more]

This two day professional development workshop on 26-27 November will explore how your company can: develop creative, leading-edge responses to sustainability opportunities and challenges; be more resilient - anticipating future resource constraints and disruptions; access markets and contribute to social development at the ‘base of the pyramid’; and, satisfy growing demand for sustainable products or services. [more]

Dr Peter Ball and Prof Mark Jolly of Cranfield University joined Elizabeth Campetti, Associate Legal Director, Coca-Cola Enterprises to deliver a keynote at the Manufacturing Law Conference on 20 October in London.  They presented the initial findings and recommendations from a recent collaborative white paper on the current and future landscape of sustainable manufacturing across the food and drink industry, which identifies six major themes for development that the food and drink industry need to address in the coming years to achieve rapid and fundamental change.  A second white paper will be released in the coming months. Read more about the collaboration here.

Dr Doroteya Vladimirova has been promoted to Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. Doroteya has also been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

Last year the School of Management and Doughty Centre began a major new commitment as they welcomed the inaugural group of students for the new MSc in Management & Corporate Sustainability at Cranfield University. [more]

The Centre’s second annual summer workshop for graduate students from the Graduate School of Management of Technology Hanyang University in Korea took place at the IfM, Cambridge in August. Twenty five students attended the 5 day workshop which included lectures on Industrial Sustainability from a systems perspective, sustainable business models, open innovation, nanotechnology, laser technology, international supply management as well as many other topics. For more information on the Centre’s summer workshop programme please contact Jee-Yeon Choi at jyc30@cam.ac.uk.

Congratulations to Dr Mélanie Despeisse who received the Best Presentation Award at the APMS (Advances in Production Management Systems) conference in Tokyo on 5-9 September 2015 for her paper on ‘The Role of Additive Manufacturing in Improving Resource Efficiency and Sustainability’ co-authored with Dr Simon Ford (Centre for Technology Management, IfM, University of Cambridge). [more]  

Papers are invited for the 3rd International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM-2016). The conference will take place in Chania on the island of Crete, Greece on the 4-6 April 2016. There are four general tracks, contact the track chairs for more information: Sustainable Design, Innovation and Services - Leila Sheldrick, Loughborough; Sustainable Manufacturing Processes and Technology - Peter Ball, Cranfield; Sustainable Manufacturing Systems and Enterprises - Daniel Eyers, Cardiff; and Decision Support for Sustainability - Nancy Bocken, Delft. More information on the SDM-2016 website.

Doctoral researcher Geraldine Brennan has been selected by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as one of the 25 ‘Green Talents’ for 2015.  The Green Talents are young researchers who are selected every year to take part in the 2 week long "Green Talents - International Forum for High Potentials in Sustainable Development’ taking place from 17-31 October 2015. [more]

Centre for Industrial Sustainability researchers from Cambridge, Cranfield and Loughborough Universities presented six papers at the 13th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing (GCSM) on the 16th - 18th September in Ho Chi Minh City / Binh Duong, Vietnam. The papers included outcomes from research on Eco-efficiency, Business Models for Sustainability, and Business Model Innovation and Manufacturing Resilience. All papers are listed in the publications section of this newsletter.

Cranfield doctoral researcher Serhan Alshammari attended the Ellen MacArthur Foundation CE100 Acceleration Workshop in Milan in October to run the reverse logistics charter workshop with EMF and DHL. The work has delivered archetypes for different ways of running reverse logistics and has produced initial maturity models for companies to judge themselves against. The next step is to carry out detailed data collection with the CE100 companies and others to capture their operations and position against the maturity scales to in turn identify opportunities for development. For more information contact Serhan at s.alshammari@cranfield.ac.uk.

Centre for Industrial Sustainability doctoral researcher Miying Yang passed her viva on 8 September. Her thesis, Sustainable Value Creation for Product-Service Systems (PSS), seeks to help manufacturers identify opportunities for sustainable value creation in their business. [more]

Representatives from the Centre for Industrial Sustainability from Loughborough, Cranfield and Cambridge Universities will be participating in the Disruptive Innovation Festival 2015. Researchers from the Centre for SMART at Loughborough will be presenting a series of talks on the 17, 18, and 19 November on Immortal Resources.  Cranfield PhD researcher Zoe Rowe will be chairing a Grill the Geeks session on 13 November 2015 which includes fellow Centre PhD researcher, Serhan Alshammari, as well as other Cranfield PhD researchers. Ian Bamford from Cambridge will be taking part in Head to Head Live: Future of Innovation Debate on 17 November.

Cranfield doctoral researcher Handson Pimenta has recently returned from a data collection visit to Italian coffee producer illy.  Handson’s research focuses on collaborative initiatives between buying firms and their suppliers in order to create sustainable business value and innovation. [more]

The Manufacturing Engineering Tripos is looking for company challenges to set the 4th year University of Cambridge MEng students this year for their long project. Students spend 6 weeks (plus one preparatory week) working on significant challenges within the business, usually involving some business and technical dimension. Each project is expected to produce deliverables which can be agreed with the student in advance. [more]  

Dr Padmakshi Rana and doctoral researcher Miying Yang presented at the final coordination meeting of Europe-China High Value Engineering Network (EC-HVEN) in Beijing, China in September. The meeting had a good representation of academics from leading universities in Europe and China, as well as advisors from industry. The purpose of the meeting was to review the work packages and further establish the framework for global network collaborations in high value engineering areas. The meeting was followed by the Global Grand Challenge Summit (GGCS) in Beijing.

Game on: How gamification is bringing sustainability to the masses - Article on Edie.net about companies turning to games to influence their own employees and inform sustainable decision-making, including the energy saving simulation games by Cranfield researcher Aanand Davé. Read the full article here.

Interview with Prof Steve Evans, Director of Research at the Centre for Industrial Sustainability - Interview in The Engineer at the Centre's annual conference in July. Read the full article here.

Government ‘must back sustainability in UK industry' - Article in the Yorkshire Post about the Manufacturing Commission Inquiry into Industrial Sustainability report 'Industrial Evolution: Making British Manufacturing Sustainable'.  Read the full article here.

Many congratulations to Cranfield doctoral researcher Serhan Alshammari and family on their new baby girl who arrived the 11th of September.