The Made Smarter Innovation (MSI) challenge aims to help UK manufacturing become more productive and competitive through the innovation and diffusion of digital technology.

While the much of focus of MSI is on industrial digital technologies, there is an awareness of how important social and economic insights will be in ensuring that the MSI challenge achieves its aims.

InterAct seeks to “pioneer human insight for industry” and is a call to arms for academics from the social sciences to support the innovation and diffusion of digital technologies that will result in a stronger, more resilient UK manufacturing industry.

Working alongside other partners within the wider Made Smarter community, the long-term vision is to build a strong, vibrant, interdisciplinary community to support UK manufacturing.

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Along with Professor MacBryde and Professor Godsell, supporting the programme is a dedicated Network Management Team and a core research team from Strathclyde, Loughborough and the University of Sheffield.

There are five key key elements to the programme:

• A Commissioned research programme will provide the opportunity to curate, augment and amplify insights from the ESS to support the diffusion and adoption of IDTs.
• A Knowledge exchange programme is critical to the diffusion of ideas from the ESS to the policy makers, manufacturers and IDT providers who could benefit from the adoption of IDTs.
• The Core research programme compliments the commissioned research programme base by addressing more systemic problems that require a longer term and more in-depth research.
• An Impact acceleration programme. There are lots of ESS insights currently in existence, that are not in a form that is easily accessible to policy makers, manufacturers, and IDT providers.
• A Storytelling fellowship programme. The ability to use storytelling as a methodology and form of dissemination is a key research skill for economic and social scientists.

Speaking about the programme, Chris Courtney, Challenge Director for Made Smarter Innovation at UKRI said: “Digital technologies have the power to radically transform how we manufacture and deliver the products and services of the future and deliver a more sustainable, resilient, prosperous economy with fundamental changes to the nature of work.

“A key part of delivering an optimal future in manufacturing will be enabled by harnessing the insights from the broader economic, social, regulatory, and political sciences.”

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