The UK Smart Manufacturing Data Hub (SMDH) aims to support manufacturing companies in their drive to invest in digital technology, providing a scalable manufacturing data analytics infrastructure across the UK, supporting businesses to become more innovative, competitive and productive, and contributing to solving the UK's productivity challenges.
Operating like a mutual society for manufacturers' data, SMDH will enable SMEs to receive intelligence from analysis of their data and gain impartial advice, consultation and training on digitalisation technologies. Each organisation's data will be secure and compartmentalised from competitors.
SMDH analysis will be provided by expert data scientists, not normally accessible to an individual SME. The SMDH will assess a company’s digitalisation trajectory and provide a clear pathway to accelerate this, enabling them to become much more self-sustaining. The SMDH will provide a UK-wide facility utilising existing business networks and physical collaboration environments at local council level.
Over time this will become an important piece of national infrastructure that enables faster innovation e.g. by allowing commercial companies to "crowdsource" new innovation solutions, enabling faster development of new supply chains in export markets.
The core aim is to improve innovation, productivity and competitiveness in the UK's economic base, while addressing challenges of peripherality.