Digital Catapult is now accepting applications from small and medium sized companies, academics and experts interested in developing innovative solutions to assist with digital manufacturing. Applications close 12 May 2017.

The Pit Stop is a highly focused open innovation activity designed to accelerate the growth of new ideas – the Seagate Pit Stop focuses specifically on digital manufacturing. This Pit Stop will be of value to companies working with a range of technologies including Artificial Intelligence; IoT; data visualisation, data infrastructure; and modelling and simulation. You’ll get the chance to explore specific challenges within the Seagate manufacturing process and discuss potential solutions with Seagate and industry experts.

The aim of the Seagate Pit Stop is to identify challenges and opportunities for optimising tooling performance, process efficiency and product quality in the context of Seagate’s HDD ‘read/write’ head manufacturing.

The Seagate atomic scale read/write head manufacturing processes require high value tooling to perform over 1500 unique process steps involving critical dimensions 1/1000th the size of a grain of salt.

Seagate collects a comprehensive amount of manufacturing data, including Terrabytes of tool sensor and process data totalling over 1.5PB stored at the facility and archived for up to 7 years. A major challenge has been trying to understand the performance of their fleet of 500+ tools in terms of comparative performance and impact on downstream product quality.

What to expect

Pit Stop participants will collaborate with Seagate, experts and other innovators to:

• Develop a common understanding of Seagate challenges within the context of Digital Manufacturing
• Identify areas where solutions could positively impact manufacturing tooling performance, process efficiencies or end product quality
• Explore how solutions could be integrated into Seagate manufacturing operations

Successful proposals submitted after the Pit Stop may lead to direct procurement or collaborative applications with Seagate for development funding via Invest Northern Ireland or Innovate UK.

Who should apply?

We want to hear from innovators experienced in developing solutions, with expertise in all or some the following areas:

• Advanced multi-variate anomaly detection
• Real time asset condition monitoring and predictive maintenance
• Modelling and simulation of processes and asset behaviour
• Data visualisation
• Data infrastructure
• IoT enabled data generation

If you are working within these areas and think you can contribute to the development of scaleable Digital Manufacturing solutions for Seagate, please complete the form below to apply for the Pit Stop.

Date, times and location

The closing date to apply for this Pit Stop is midnight on Friday 12 May 2017.

The Pit Stop will take place 13^th June 12:00-19:00 and 14^th June 09:00-17:00 at the Seagate Technology (Ireland) Springtown Facility and City Hotel in Derry, Northern Ireland.

For more information and to apply click here.