Yorkshire tech spin-out creates a 'game changer' for UK manufacturing

Early industrial adopters of FourJaw Manufacturing Analytics’ technology are reporting five- fold increases in productivity, but the firm’s founders, CEO Chris Iveson and CTO Robin

Hartley are on a mission to make installing the output-boosting technology even simpler for manufacturers.

The two founders were research engineers at the AMRC – a world leading facility that numbers McLaren, Airbus, Boeing, BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce as its partners – when they came up with the idea of an affordable device that would harness production data to provide a boost for manufacturers.

FourJaw has received the grant funding from the Business Productivity Programme, a £4.7 million collaborative venture involving Barnsley and Sheffield councils along with the Sheffield City Region Combined Mayoral Authority and the England European Regional Development Fund.

Mr Iveson said: “What we are looking at here is a potential game changer for UK manufacturing and the Business Productivity Programme grant is just the financial catalyst we need to make a swift transition from a rather labour intensive installation to a quick-to-deploy device that will give production managers deep insights that enable huge gains in output and productivity."

His business partner, and Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellow, Mr Hartley added: “In Yorkshire there is a saying that if it ain’t cutting metal, it ain’t making money. In the high-

value manufacturing sector, which is a key to the northern economy, the average utilisation of a machine is typically less than 30%. Just a 10% increase in productivity would be revolutionary; but our device delves deep into the brains of shop floor machines, decoding data to drive productivity gains well in excess of this.”

Welcoming the grant funding, AMRC CEO, Steve Foxley, said: “It’s great to see the region backing two very talented and enterprising engineers who have taken their experience at the

AMRC to spin out a company that will help UK manufacturers – large and small – to capture and deploy the power of data and digitalisation to improve productivity.”

Sheffield City Council Cabinet member for Business and Investment, Mazher Iqbal, said. “Even before the pandemic, the UK was in the midst of a productivity crisis. Support for innovative start-ups and spin-outs like FourJaw, that bring Sheffield’s strengths in digital tech and manufacturing together, point the way towards a more productive and prosperous future."

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