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Save the Date! 2015 Annual Conference

The 4th Annual Conference of the Centre for Industrial Sustainability has moved from September to July for 2015.  The conference will be held at Fitzwilliam College Cambridge on 6 - 7 July 2015.  The conference will focus on impact to industry with an exhibition (expanded from this year) of tools and research outputs from the Centre. A workshop day is planned to follow the conference on 8 July at the IfM in Cambridge. Conference registration will open in January. We look forward to seeing you at Fitzwilliam!

New Open Programme - Innovation for Value

The Centre for Industrial Sustainability is launching its first open programme designed for industry practitioners. 'Innovation for Value: transforming businesses to deliver uncaptured and sustainable value' at the IfM, University of Cambridge on 11-12 March 2015. Course participants will learn how to find new value for their stakeholders, take away and use new tools to innovate their business models, and design and plan change management programmes to implement business model innovations. [more]

Join us for Cohort Week 2015

We are delighted to announce the dates of the 2015 Annual Cohort Retreat which will take place during the week of 26th - 30th January 2015. This event is one of the highlights of the year for staff, students and members alike, and this year is shaping up to be no different. [more]

Annual Review 2013 - 2014 Published

The EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability Annual Review for 2013-2014 has recently been published.  The report is available for download on our website here.

Report from 2014 Annual Conference

Over 145 people from both academia and industry attended the Centre for Industrial Sustainability's 3rd Annual Conference on 16 - 17 September 2014 at IWM Duxford.  Feedback from the conference has been extremely positive. "We had an amazing time - met some really interesting people and have made some very useful connections", said Julia Glenn, managing Director of Extremis Technology. [more]

Sustainable Business Tools Workshop

Centre researchers led a Sustainable Business Tools Workshop Day at the IfM on 18 September. The event allowed businesses, consultants, and academics the opportunity to try out the Centre's sustainable business tools and methods in small groups with the researchers who developed them. [more

New project launch: Business Models for Sustainable Industrial Systems

Business Models for Sustainable Industrial Systems is a three-year project funded by the EPSRC which kicked off on 1 July 2014. The project is looking to advance the research and practice on business model innovations that support industrial sustainability. [more]

Launch of REDRESS Project with M&S

REDRESS is a collaborative project between M&S and Cambridge and funded by the TSB competition 'Supply Chain Innovation Towards A Circular Economy'. This is a 2-year project to drive garment recovery and retained value through business model and supply chain innovation. The first REDRESS workshop took place on 2-3 October and was attended by a group of enthusiastic forward-looking thinkers from academia, business and other organisations. [more]

Steve Evans to help MPs look at the UK's Remanufacturing Potential

Steve Evans has joined the Steering Group of the All-Party Parliamentary Manufacturing Group (APMG) and All-Party Parliamentary Sustainable Resource Group (APSRG) inquiry into the potential for remanufacturing in the UK. The inquiry, which follows on from the APSRG report 'Remanufacturing: Towards a Resource Efficient Economy', will be co-chaired by Barry Sheerman MP and Caroline Spelman MP.

Steve was also recently elected a Fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) www.thersa.org .

Students learn solutions to real industry problems at Summer Workshop

Twenty PhD and Masters students from the Graduate School of Management of Technology at Hanyang University in Korea attended the Centre’s first ‘Sustainability and Manufacturing’ Summer Workshop at the Institute for Manufacturing in Cambridge in June 2014. [more]

Good bye to Dr Padmakshi Rana

Dr Padmakshi Rana has left her role as a lead researcher at the Centre for Industrial Sustainability to be a sustainability freelance consultant in Singapore. She will be greatly missed by Centre staff and members!  We look forward to future collaborations with Padmakshi who will remain connected to the Centre from Singapore. She can still be contacted on pr296@cam.ac.uk.

Congratulations to Dr Maryam Masood, Dr Curie Park, and Dr Samuel Short

Many congratulations to three Centre Doctoral Researchers who have recently completed their PhDs [more]

World Federation Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) Forum 2014

The WFSGI Manufacturing Forum 2014, 'How can design and manufacturing embrace?', will take place on 13-14 November 2014 at the Porsche Centre in Leipzig Germany. Prof Steve Evans will be speaking at the Forum and facilitating discussions.  Prof Evans will also be leading workshops with Dr Dai Morgan, on 'Integrated design to manufacture: Who does what when?'. Visit the conference website here for information and for conference registration.

First Industrial Sustainability Roundtable

The beginning of June saw the successful completion of the 1st Industrial Sustainability Roundtable at Oxon Hoath.  Hosted by the Centre for Industrial Sustainability, the roundtable series seeks to engage thought leaders in strategic issues within the field of industrial sustainability. This first roundtable was set up to gather the latest thinking on industrial sustainability to assess the research priorities for the decade ahead. [more]

Contributions sought for Energy Efficient Manufacturing Systems Session at SDM15

Researchers are invited to contribute to a special session organised by Dr Peter Ball and Dr Konstantinos Salonitis of Cranfield University on energy efficient manufacturing systems at the next Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM15) conference in Seville, Spain 12-14 April 2015 [more].

Maria Holgado to work on REDRESS Project

Maria Holgado, who was recently an academic visitor to the Centre for Industrial Sustainability, has joined the Centre in October 2014 as a research associate. She is currently involved in the REDRESS project with industrial collaborator M&S and funded by the Technology Strategy Board. Maria's main areas of interest are industrial sustainability, sustainable value creation, sustainable business models, product service systems, maintenance management and maintenance services. You can contact Maria at mh769@cam.ac.uk.

NMR Commended at 2degrees Awards

Congratulations to the Next Manufacturing Revolution which was Commended at 2degrees' Sustainability Champions Awards in the external communications campaign category. [more]

5th EPSRC Global Sustainable Manufacturing Network Meeting

Steve Evans, Peter Ball and Yongjiang Shi attended this China-UK network meeting in Beijing in May to present research and to engage in collaboration discussion. The network is led by Prof Bernard Hon from University of Liverpool and the local hosts were the National Key Laboratory for Remanufacturing. [more]

International Forum on Green Manufacturing, ZhangJiagang, China

After participating in the 5th EPSRC Global Sustainable Manufacturing Network meeting in Beijing, Steve Evans and Peter Ball attended a conference organised by the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society. The conference which was attended by both academics and industrialists provided an interesting insight into the detail of the advances being made in Chinese industry.  Many of the detailed practices being reported were similar to those regularly documented in the UK. Others were different such as the centralised nature of Chinese industrial support and a greater emphasis in the UK on the industrial system as well as the industrial technology.

Launch of the Business Model Innovation Grid

In July Plan C, the Flemish network for sustainable management of materials, has launched a Business Model Innovation Grid: http://www.plan-c.eu/bmix/ . This grid, based on the paper ‘A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes’ by Centre researchers Nancy Bocken, Sam Short, Padmakshi Rana, and Steve Evans, aims to inspire businesses to reconceive how they operate and to become more future proof. The grid is structured around the 8 business model archetypes and currently includes 100 business cases.

Read more about Sustainable Business Model Archetypes in Nancy Bocken's guest blog for Plan C here.

Centre researchers participate in Gordon Research Conference

Sudhir Rama Murthy, Nancy Bocken, Geraldine Brennan and Fenna Blomsma participated in the Gordon Research Conference in Industrial Ecology, held in Barga, Italy, on 1-6 June. [more

Presentation at conference on Sustainable Innovation in Chains and Networks

Lloyd Fernando attended the WICaNeM 2014 Conference (Wageningen International Conference on Chain and Network Management) on Sustainable Innovation in Chains and Networks from the 4th to 6th June in Capri, Italy and presented the paper, ‘Evaluating capabilities necessary for transformation to sustainable industrial systems: an exploratory case study approach’, written together with Prof Steve Evans and Dr Jag Srai.  [more]

'Unprinting' start-up wins Venture Competition Award

Congratulations to Cambridge University spin-off Reduse who won the UK Venture Competition organised by Climate-KIC UK, the EU’s main climate innovation initiative. Reduse are now in the European Climate-KIC final taking place this week in Valencia, Spain.  Good luck to the Reduse team! [more].

Centre doctoral researcher at the University of Technology Sydney

Geraldine Brennan, a Centre doctoral researcher at Imperial College London, was recently on a visiting research placement funded by Climate KIC at the Centre for Management and Organization Studies in the Business School at the University of Technology Sydney.  [more]

Centre research and collaborations in the press

The Future of Manufacturing: Efficient, Experimental, Sustainable? Prof Steve Evans shares some key findings from the Future of Manufacturing Report and talks about how fundamental changes in manufacturing operations are set to transform the global industry in the future.
Manufacturing Leadership Journal. Print and online.
www.mljournal-digital.com/meleadershipjournal/201408#pg1

New business models for a sustainable future. Dr Doroteya Vladimirova contends that manufacturers need to start doing business differently if they are to create value for themselves and for society as a whole – even if that means working with some of their competitors. IfM Review, Issue 2. Print and online http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/ifm-review/issue-2/new-business-models-for-a-sustainable-future/

Attention is now turning to non-labour costs - the ‘elephant in the room’ An article on the Next Manufacturing Revolution about potential savings from energy efficiency and waste reduction in most industrial sectors.
CFO World. Online.
www.cfoworld.co.uk/in-depth/change-management/3467640/sustaining-cost-reduction

The art of doing more with less
Steve Evans talks about eco-efficiency - how manufacturers can make more out of less without making radical changes to their products.
Future Magazine. Print.