Jason Ford

Busroot to help tackle £150bn productivity gap

News

Inefficiency across UK industry costs an estimated £150bn annually, but this could change with the introduction of Busroot, a new manufacturing performance platform from Cornwall-based Output Industries.

Busroot has contributed to productivity gains of 10-15 per cent for participating companies
Busroot has contributed to productivity gains of 10-15 per cent for participating companies - Output Industries

Busroot, connecting factory machines, systems, and shifts to create a real-time, centralised view of operations, was part of the Innovate UK Smart Manufacturing Data Hub (SMDH) project, which aimed to help manufacturers, particularly SMEs, enhance their processes and digital capabilities.

SMDH enabled Output Industries to further develop its technology through user feedback following deployment to over 20 manufacturers across various sectors. 

The company said Busroot has since delivered 10–15 per cent productivity gains for SMEs without the need for additional staff, infrastructure, or external consultants.

In collaboration with other SMEs, Output Industries also contributed to SMDH’s Manufacturing Data Exchange Platform (MDEP), sharing anonymised data with the wider manufacturing ecosystem. Collective insights uncovered a 28 per cent reduction in energy costs and 30 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions across 36 industry sectors.

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Tom Baker, Output Industries co-founder & CTO, stressed that Busroot is not a condition monitoring platform, rather it is a manufacturing performance platform that measures actual output against performance targets in real-time.

“It monitors things like production throughput, cycle time analysis, downtime analysis, energy efficiency and energy per production unit to understand the performance, and measure against expected levels,” he said. “If they are not performing at the level they should be, what can we do to improve overall performance?”

Baker added: “The ultimate aim is to be able to benchmark manufacturers against industry standards, across various industries [and] sectors. So it's less about tactical process monitoring and more about guiding business strategy.”

The installation of Busroot sensors requires a sensor unit to be installed into a machine, which is designed to look for a specific set of signals, Baker explained.

“It's a standardised process which can be up and running very quickly, and allows for easy scalability across entire factories,” he said.

With a growing user base, Output Industries plans to scale Busroot across the UK and into Europe.

The eight-minute video below explains how it works.

   

manufacturing performance platform