A quarterly meeting of Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) – Advanced Manufacturing of Homes, Buildings and Infrastructure (AMHBI) was held at BRE, Watford on 22nd January 2016 with a consortium dinner the night before.

A quarterly meeting of Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) – Advanced Manufacturing of Homes, Buildings and Infrastructure (AMHBI) was held at BRE, Watford on 22 January 2016 with a consortium dinner the night before. The meeting was jointly organised by Laing O’Rourke, BRE and University of Cambridge - DIAL and Engineering Design Centre (EDC).

More than 40 people attended the meeting representing more than 20 consortium partners from Laing O'Rourke, Airedale, Apex Cables, Armstrong, Arup, Beckhoff Automation, British Gypsum/Saint Gobain, BRE, Crane, Crown House Technologies, Expanded, Explore Manufacturing, Fulcro, Grundfos, Hamworthy Heating, Hoare Lea, Select, SIG, Thorn Lighting, University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre and WSP.

The University of Cambridge is involved in the Integrated Design for Manufacturing and Assembly research work stream, D(FMA)², the aim of which is to address the overarching question of ‘how the resilience of novel construction elements and their associated design and manufacturing processes can be improved?’ Central to achieving this aim is the inherent importance of project management decision making, and the cross -team and cross-company information flow, design approaches and tools necessary to support effective decisions.

Dr Tariq Masood reported on the D(FMA)² work stream, with inputs from Brian Robertson and Mohamed Hani El-Reifi (EDC). This included overall work stream report and engagement with other AMSCI work streams and partners as well as updates on stakeholder analysis, high-level discrete event simulation for advanced manufacturing facility, design & manufacturing integration modelling work and design process modelling work.

Dr Tariq Masood also organised a workshop to capture high-level decisions and information flows, as part of the consortium meeting with support from Adam Locke (Laing O’Rourke Partnership and Innovation Leader) and Emma Rigler (Laing O’Rourke Advisor on Advanced Manufacturing). The attendees were grouped in differing supply chain roles e.g. end users, developers, designers, suppliers, manufacturers and installers. Within their respective groups, the attendees looked at various decisions involved in their roles and related information required and supplied. The attendees reported back on their findings at the end of the session. The workshop sessions received very positive feedback from the participants.

As part of the AMSCI quarterly meeting, BRE organised tours of Wind Tunnel, Acoustics, Fire and Structures labs on the day.

For any further queries, please contact Tariq Masood tm487@cam.ac.uk.