FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics
Innovative plug-and-play machine monitoring platform designed for manufacturers from any industry to maximise their productivity.
Name
FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics
Lead
Chris Iveson
What motivated you to commercialise your research?
The UK manufacturing industry employs 2.6 million people, making us the 8th largest manufacturer globally. As a nation, we’re known for our resilience in the face of manufacturing challenges including economic recessions and the recent global pandemic. However, the big challenge facing manufacturers today is how they can increase their productivity.
This was an issue that our co-founders Chris Iveson and Robin Hartley-Willows took upon themselves to find a technology solution that would enable manufacturers of all sizes, across all manufacturing sub-sectors would be easily and affordably deployed in their manufacturing environments without the huge costs and complex IT integrations traditionally associated with being able to monitor, and therefore improve, their productivity.
What was the process of commercialising your research?
Following an early career as a mechanical design engineer at several UK manufacturers, Chris moved into a role commercialising manufacturing research at the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), one of the UK's prestigious High Value Manufacturing Catapult Centres. Here he met colleague Robin Hartley-Willows, a talented and entrepreneurial software developer, who had developed proof-of-concept machine integration software that test-bed manufacturers loved.
Chris and Robin worked together and won funding from the University of Sheffield’s internal commercialisation funds, plus a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship to focus exclusively on developing the invention into a business Chris and Robin developed the 'Minimal Viable Product' (MVP) at the AMRC to inform part of the ongoing research. When the software was presented to manufacturing industry leaders, there was frequently significant interest about whether the MVP could be bought.
The answer at the time was ’no’, because it was proof-of-concept research software. Integration was done on a per-machine/per-control system basis; we didn’t have a way to deploy it into machine shops at scale; the software was MVP and the features and benefits were not well developed for manufacturers.
On top of this, there wasn’t a commercial model built around it - which is so important to deliver a product that can be maintained and continually improved well into the future. However, Robin and Chris were given confidence that there was a significant market need, so they decided to start building the business around the software. The field research found that the average machine utilisation was 16.8% , which was drastically lower than what manufacturers were predicting.
When asked, manufacturers typically estimate their productivity to be in the region of 60-80%. While manufacturers found their actual productivity figures frightening, they represent a huge opportunity that manufacturers didn't even know they had. Manufacturers often think that the only thing they can do to increase their output is to buy another machine or increase their headcount (which is challenging given the mass skills shortage seen in manufacturing). FourJaw shows them that they have a huge opportunity to increase output by improving their productivity, achieving more with the resources they already have.
What were the challenges you faced during the Commercialisation process?
When we launched FourJaw in September 2020. At the time, the only way we knew of to access the manufacturing data we needed was to integrate with the control systems of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines. To do this requires a visit to each customer whereby we had to figure out on each individual machine how the integration could be done.
Many machines required expensive licenses purchasing from the machine Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to free up the data. On top of this, many of the older machines were incapable of sharing data all together. We found this approach to be time consuming, complex and expensive. The COVID-19 pandemic added to these challenges as the ensuing lockdowns prohibited us from visiting customers. However, the pandemic also created opportunity as it forced us to innovate our way out of the challenge. We prioritised a zero-touch installation model, which led to the scalable and shippable plug-and-play hardware solution that has been the core of our success. The IoT hardware that we developed had to be of insignificant cost, machine agnostic and so simple to install that the customer can do it themselves in a matter of minutes. We launched our new hardware on the 10th May 2021.
The fact our hardware is machine agnostic has been so important to our success. Soon after launching, we realised that it wasn’t just our core market, subcontract CNC machine shops, that faced significant challenges with their production productivity. Manufacturers of all shapes and sizes started to approach us as they wanted to realise the productivity-maximising benefits of the FourJaw platform. Because our IoT hardware can be installed on any machine that uses electrical power, our market expanded significantly.
Today we have manufacturers from industries as wide-ranging as Automotive and Aerospace to Food & Beverage and Energy. None of this would have been possible without the development of our innovative, plug-and-play IoT hardware.
All of this has happened within the last 3 years, needless to say we are very excited and optimistic about what the future holds.
The Commercialiation Journey has enabled Robin and Chris to build a business, employ more than 20 people locally who together have made it our vision of maximising manufacturing productivity across the globe a reality.
James Brook
Head of Marketing & Communications at FourJaw