North East’s first B2B Manufacturing Centre

The University of Teesside has established the North East’s first B2B (business-to-business) Manufacturing Centre at its Middlesbrough campus. Its primary role is to help the region’s small and medium sized industrial enterprises (SMEs) to adopt technologies and processes that will enable them to become bigger players in global supply chains.

The Centre is a joint collaboration between the Universities of Teesside and Warwick which is home to the internationally acclaimed Warwick Manufacturing Group. One NorthEast has provided part of the £1.5m of funding.

Over the next three years, the Centre is aiming to assist a minimum of 60 SME companies to adopt new B2B technologies.

“We plan to create seven demonstrator project environments, each focusing on a specific business process or technology theme,” said Professor Munir Ahmad, Project Director of the Centre.

“Each demonstrator project will be a vehicle for achieving SME adoption of an appropriate solution, using some or all of the components,” added Professor Ahmad.

The areas to be covered are electronic trading, supply chain, collaborative product development, logistics and distribution, data exchange and distribution, digital manufacturing and visualisation.

“The only thing that is constant in today’s global marketplace is continuous change, and SMEs in the North East are not immune to this reality,” said Dr. Vinesh Raja, Head of Digital Engineering and Visualisation at the University of Warwick. “The only way of surviving in this dynamic marketplace is to adopt cutting edge B2B technologies. The issue is not when or why companies must adopt B2B concepts, but how. This partnership between the Universities of Teesside and Warwick will provide a unique channel for the transfer of essential new knowledge to SMEs,” added Dr Raja.

---