See all Innovation Awards

MTC – A digital toolset for SMEs

EARTO Innovation Awards 2021 – Impact Delivered Category

 

While much information already exists in terms of the benefits of digitalisation for large companies, there is a gap in support available for small businesses to understand how they could start their own journey. The technologies are often available and suitable for deployment, however they still present adoption challenges for many SMEs who need support in implementation.

Innovation: EARTO member MTC – The Manufacturing Technology Centre developed an improved digital toolset to offer pragmatic, measurable adoption benefits to small companies. It consists of eight tools. Each tool could work as a stand-alone improvement, or as part of a set of tools to be adapted to the user’s needs. All have a delivery methodology and transferable best practices, supported by software and, in some cases, hardware. Each tool overview  describes the typical challenges faced by SMEs, an approach to overcoming these, as well as the practical benefits of digitalisation.

Impact Delivered: Thanks to MTC’s digital toolset, over sixty SMEs have benefitted from one or more tools  over a two year period. This number is expected to increase to at least 100 SMEs per year in the future. The average purchase order value is around £4,500. An overall economic impact of over £1.5M is expected, given that participating SMEs have invested approximately £250,000 up to now.

More information about this innovation

The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), established in 2010, is an independent RTO aiming at bridging the gap between academia and industry – often referred to as ‘the valley of death’.


www.the-mtc.org