'A huge endorsement': AMRC 'Godfather' Keith Ridgway becomes chair of aerospace spinout company DigitalCNC

It has now appointed Professor Keith Ridgway as the company’s chair. Professor Ridgway co-founded the AMRC in 2000 with Boeing and in 2012 received a CBE for his services to manufacturing research.

But he left the AMRC in 2019 in a shock departure reported at the time to be connected with the university seeking greater control over the centre’s activities.

DigitalCNC is the first time he has been involved with a company associated with the AMRC since that departure. Professor Ridgway said his departure agreement prevented him from working with the AMRC but DigitalCNC is now a separate private company.

DigitalCNC founder Dr Rob Ward, an industrial research fellow at the University of Sheffield who splits his time between AMRC and its School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the AMRC, is stepping back from the bulk of his university work to focus on running the new company.

The firm says it is offering a new way of delivering CNC – or computer numerical control – processes in which computer software dictates the movement of factory machinery and tools.

Its software uses machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, and offers companies the ability to accurately map out how new machines would work or deliver potential improvements to existing equipment without having to do costly physical trials.

Professor Ridgway said while the AMRC was established around high capital investment in physical machines, what DigitalCNC is doing represents “next generation” work in the field.

He said: "Things have changed a lot in the last few years with the way machine research has gone, it is a lot about data analysis and data collection and I’m still keen to keep up with the state-of-the-art. Having a spinout is the way to go. The private sector can do a lot of work in this area and there’s a lot of opportunity for DigitalCNC.

"If we started the AMRC today you wouldn’t put down the capital investment, you would do something like DigitalCNC do and be much more competitive.”

Professor Ridgway said he hopes his experience can assist DigitalCNC’s ambitions to become a global leader.

"A lot of it is connections and knowledge within the industry of people who are likely to use the software and connections to other software. A company like DigitalCNC has got a product but that’s never going to be the end product, it is going to develop and develop. Having a role to help that development direction is important. I think I can help with that.

"If you work in the supply chain and you’ve got capital in the machines and your machine parts, you’ve always got big investment involved. The beauty of DigitalCNC and these type of companies that are more software-based is you develop it and then it sells. You’ve got good income and then you develop it again. So you are on a track developing the company. I hope this company develops into a ‘Digital AMRC’ in many respects. It will do a lot of work to help companies be more productive within the machining field.”

DigitalCNC is also being backed by early-stage investment business Yorkshire AI Labs run by entrepreneur David Richards.

Mr Richards said he was delighted with Professor Ridgway’s involvement.

“If somebody was to give you a magic wand and you could choose anybody in the world to be the chairman of this company, you would choose Keith Ridgway.

"We are very lucky to have Keith and it is the first time he’s been involved since he left the AMRC with a company connected with it.

"He could see there were real customers using this product. There are lots of ideas out there but there aren’t many that have done what these guys have done by getting customers on board.

"Keith is the expert in this field. The fact he is doing it is a huge endorsement for the company.”

Dr Ward said: “Keith brings an unprecedented reputation – there is no one more famous and respected than Keith in our field. If he sends an email at 9.30pm, at 9.31pm we get a reply.

"Myself and the CTO David Wilkinson are world leaders at what we do. But we’re not businesspeople. David Richards and the YAIL team are the A team when it comes to marketing, growth and the software development side of things. Then you add Keith with his experience, contacts, network and advice, it is a tour de force.

"The pipeline is really strong at the moment, we’ve got a lot of meetings with essentially all the top players in the aerospace market but we are keen to explore other markets and how we could adopt our software to heavy industry as well.”