Business and Commercial Projects

Knowledge Transfer is a two way process. Industry partners benefit from engagement with the School, as students and staff often prove to be an invaluable extra resource with innovative ideas and solutions to assist with business challenges and enable achievement of competitive advantage.

Examples of this engagement are: regional and government funded projects; collaborative business development projects, eg Knowledge Transfer Partnerships; business consultancy; development and delivery of bespoke training; development and delivery of testing and process reengineering.

Recent clients include the NHS, Lancashire Youth Offending Team, British Aerospace. Similarly staff and students benefit from current knowledge transfer into teaching and learning. Knowledge and experience gained through commercial projects and links with industry benefit students directly, through staff with up to date skills, ‘real world’ focussed research and understanding of collaborative working.

Partnerships with employers can result in direct contribution to curriculum development, delivery and assessment ensuring relevance and currency. Students and employers directly communicate in workshops, lectures and assessments which often results in opportunities for site visits, placements and employment.

Current Projects

Jones Stroud Insulation Ltd
Jones Stroud Insulation Ltd. is a member of the KREMPEL group, headquartered in Germany - a leader in the fields of high technology electrical insulation, composite textile products and base materials. The programme lay in the consumer business unit, where high temperature, high voltage sleeving is manufactured. JSI is well established in all areas of the market with a range of traditional solutions. Increased competition identified a need for significant optimisation of processing methods and technology. The KTP aimed to reduce the cost of production and support the introduction of new and niche product development opportunities by optimising current manufacturing methods through process development and implementation of standard business improvement techniques and the introduction of innovative new processing technologies. There was a shortage of knowledge within the Company of approaches to general experimental design and analysis as applied to converting potential new products and process into production.

The outcomes of the project has led to an increased turnover in excess of £750,000 p.a. (planned £250,00) and a cost saving of £720,000. As a consequence of the project, Six-Sigma has been embraced by senior management during the programme and has led to the implementation of six-sigma techniques across the company. This, in turn, has led to the use of modern statistical techniques in both production and development of new products. Managers and supervisors across site have successfully completed their lean six-sigma green belt training. The KTP has resulted in the creation of NVQ level 2 and 3 portfolios with operators and supervisors trained on business improvement techniques.

The KTP associate has also won the prestigious Business Leader of Tomorrow Award in 2008 and this project is running for the Best KTP partnership in 2010.

Elphin Project
This is  collaboration between the Dept, JobCentre Plus and the NHS to develop a participant tracking system to support the Government's Pathways to Work initiative.  Version 2 has been live since April 2006.  Website available shortly.   Recent press releases include Computer Weekly and KableNET. 
  
DVice
 Funding has been received from the LDDA to produce an Offending Behaviour programme for the Lancashire Youth Offending Team.  Phase 1 has been delivered to the client and is in use in a number of pilot offices around the Lancashire region.  Phase 2 of the project has now been completed and is now in use across Lancashire.  Website www.dvice.org 
  
Note-Ed
 This is a specialist piece of software that enables Notetakers to support Deaf students with their academic studies.  This product is fully supported by the University's Specialist Learning Resource Unit (SLRU) and is promoted by them to other Notetakers and SLRU's in other Universities.  Website www.note-ed.org 
  
BEAM
 Broadband Enabled Activities for Museums (BEAM). The ChiCI group in collaboration with the Lancashire Museums Service, and funded by the Lancashire Digital Development Agency Broadband Fund, are piloting the use of Broadband technologies to enhance school visits to museums.
 

Professional Computer Training

We aim to provide highly vocational and innovative short courses that will meet the needs of industry and commerce in the rapidly evolving discipline of computing.

Through an understanding of local business needs, we have recently developed a new range of short courses (University Certificates/Advanced University Certificates) covering a variety of IT Professional skills as required by industy standard bodies such as Oracle, Cisco, MCSE and DSDM Practitioner.

These flexible short courses offer organisations industry standard content within a sensible pricing structure. 

The School runs a variety of courses which can be taken on a module by module basis as appropriate to a companies staff development. These range from level 1 courses in IT through to courses from our MSc programmes at level 4. Courses include:

IT courses .
Full and part time postgraduate and undergraduate degrees.
Bespoke courses for your specific needs - contact the School to discuss your requirements.

How are they offered?
These courses can be taken at the University or sometimes a partner college in the North West at the times that they are being run for registered students.

Alternatively these courses can be run at your company site and at a time of your choice provided the facilities are appropriate to the level of the course.

In addition the Department can provide courses which are tailored to your companies specific staff development needs.

Typical courses offered
The following courses are run as part of our standard programmes ad can be attended at the University, some Partner Colleges, or run at your own location where facilities permit.

IT1301 Word Processing
IT1302 Spreadsheets
IT1304 Presentation Graphics
IT1306 Electronic Communication and the World Wide Web
IT2301 Advanced Word Processing and DTP
IT2302 Advanced Spreadsheets and Applications
IT2303 Databases
PY3110 Modern Programming
PY3111 Research Methods
MC4110 PC Interfacing
MC4215 Virtual Instrumentation
MC4216 Designing Databases Applications
ST4158 Computational Methods in Industrial Statistics
ST4258 Computer Intensive Approaches to Industrial Problems
NM4110 Preparation and Properties of Nanosystems
NM4210 Characterisation and Applications of Nanosystems

Consultancy for Business

If your company or organisation which has a specific problem or requires a specific measurement making, then we offer a consultancy service covering the following broad areas: Problems associated with computers, networks and the use of software particularly in the control of instrumentation. (recent work with IRS Ltd, Liverpool)
Statistics and statistical analysis of business, medical or general problems. (recent work with Lancashire Centre for Medical Studies)
Measurements and consultancy on materials, particularly using nmr, X-ray diffraction and electrochemical techniques. (recent work with Baxenden, Liquid Plastics)

 

Expertise can be offered in:

Use of computer packages such as word processing, DTP, spreadsheets, databases, web page construction and graphics.
High level computing, instrument software applications, statistical and mathematical programming, image processing and networking, in particular:
Labview
Mathcad
GPIB
C++
Maple
SPSS
SAS
Statistics as applied to the business, medical and environmental areas.
Materials preparation
Chemistry and analytical chemistry
Chemical sensors
Magnetic materials.

Sometimes short term consultancy projects can develop into longer term research projects which may be funded by a mix of company and government funding which can generate some very valuable developments for the company.

Currently we have long term substantial research projects running with:

BNFL
Laporte Fine Chemicals
IRS Ltd, Liverpool (Radiological Image Calibration).