Auretin has been awarded funding from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, through the Made Smarter Innovation programme for Project Hermes, in which we are building an AI-powered factory analytics platform to help SMEs reduce operational cost inefficiencies.
Inefficiencies across labour, machinery, raw materials, quality and energy are estimated to cost the UK manufacturing industry £49.7bn a year. Most manufacturers know inefficiency is costing them money. Far fewer can put a figure on it, or say which line, machine or product it comes from. Around 80% either lack accurate data on these inefficiencies or rely on manual, time-consuming calculations, pulling figures from machine logs, quality reports and spreadsheets that were never designed to be read together.
The consequence is predictable. Without a clear view of cost, improvement effort goes to the problem that is most visible rather than the one that is most expensive, and investment decisions are made on instinct. The effect is sharpest in advanced manufacturers, where processes are more complex and data sits across more systems. It is compounded by slow adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies, which leaves UK plants at a disadvantage against European, American and Japanese peers.
Project Hermes is aimed at closing that gap. The platform we are building takes a plant’s existing data, works out where cost is being lost, and puts a figure on each inefficiency. An embedded AI agent then benchmarks performance across operations and points to where to act first.
The hard part is the data. Factory records are rarely clean or consistent, and turning them into a reliable cost figure usually takes days of manual work. The platform is designed to do that work with records as they are, so the time goes into fixing problems rather than measuring them.
The platform sits between a consultancy engagement and an off-the-shelf software product. Software on its own can report a problem but rarely gets it fixed, and a consultant can drive change but is expensive to keep on site. It does the analysis, then guides whoever is running the improvement work, whether that is Auretin, another consultancy or the manufacturer’s own continuous improvement team, through what to change and in what order. In effect, a consultant in your pocket.
For an SME, the prize is cost competitiveness. Every inefficiency found and fixed comes straight off the cost of each part, which means sharper quotes, better margins and more room to win work that currently goes to larger or overseas competitors. Across the sector, that adds up to stronger order books, jobs kept and created, and UK plants competing on cost rather than just on quality and service.
Many manufacturers have an idea where their problems are. Far fewer know what each one costs, which to tackle first, or how to fix it. If that sounds familiar, or you would like to follow how Hermes develops, get in touch.
