Research success celebrated in local Knowledge Transfer Partnership Award

Midlands based battery manufacturer Accutronics has won a Knowledge Transfer Partnership Award for an innovative research project conducted together with Aston University. The national technology and innovation programme, run by the UK’s Technology Strategy Board and, led by Prabhjit Singh Chugh, operational strategy engineer, offered valuable results from research into the custom battery design processes.

Pictured (left to right Dr Ming Lim, Dr. Russ  Bromley, Gareth Hancox and Dr. Doug Love.

 A Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) is a Technology Strategy Board Programme intended to promote and support research into the development and exploitation of technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business, in order to increase economic growth and improve quality of life.

“Under the terms of the scheme, Prabhjit is an employee of the University who works, to all intents and purposes, as a member of the team at Accutronics,” explained Martin May of Aston University. “His role is to present a project in partnership with the host business to attract Government funding. The University provides some supervision and mentorship, as, of course, does Accutronics. This project is one of several in the West Midlands part funded by a grant from the European Research Development Fund.”
“Accutronics has provided immense support in developing and implementing a new customer driven approach towards operational strategy development,” said Prabjit. “The KTP partnership between Aston University and Accutronics has made it possible to convert academic advancements into a practical business tool which will continuously provide benefits to the business even beyond the life of the project. Furthermore, Accutronics, an excellent host company, have supported me in developing a new approach to managing operational improvements in a very customer-driven way,” he concluded.

Prabhjit and his team also developed ways of increasing supply chain efficiency; improving the reliability of supply to customers and to reducing costs. Key achievements in the first year of the project have included the definition of operations performance targets for existing and new markets and the identification of over one hundred improvement actions in the business process. 

“The two year KTP project was aimed at developing and implementing an operational strategy, together with all necessary processes and facilities to support a growing and increasingly complex product range within Accutronics,” explained Gareth Hancox, company supervisor for the KTP Project. “It is now in its advanced stages and we’re confident it will further improve Accutronics’ reputation amongst our customers, allowing us to deliver products in accordance with challenging performance requirements.”

“The KTP programme unites academic rigour and applied thinking with the realities of practical business challenges in a very effective way.  It is part of Accutronics’ innovation programme, intended to continually bring new technology and innovative solutions to our products and processes,” enthused Rob Phillips, Accutronics’ managing director and facilitator of the KTP project.