KITE - Knowledge and Innovation
Transfer in Engineering

The overall aim of the project is ‘to increase the skills, capacity, knowledge and levels of technology adoption of engineering and manufacturing industries in the INTERREG region, through development and rollout of industry specific training materials, equipping training and development laboratories for use by industry and third level students and thereby helping to ensure the long term sustainability of the key manufacturing and engineering industries in the region.’

This Project is a collaboration of three college partners & has a timeframe of three years and a total budget of €3.2 million. Each of the project partners has a long tradition of working with local industry in developing and implementing specific training solutions. They have expertise to assist companies to resolve particular technical problems. The colleges have over the years invested in state of the art equipment to use for training and research purposes.

This minimises company costs for training as machines do not have to be taken out of production for training purposes. Also the in house expertise of colleges is available to companies and their staff. With increasing globalisation and competition from lower cost economies, the manufacturing and engineering sectors are facing increasing competitive pressures. One of the ways to counteract these is to increase productivity and lower costs through automation, robotics and application of the latest technologies.

The local Colleges have a key role to play in identification of the emerging technological trends and provide specific industry based training to help local industry develop, increase productivity and competitiveness and long term sustainability. The KITE project plans to build on the previous work undertaken by IT Sligo and NRC Ballymena on equipping training laboratories with robotics and automation technology for use as training and demonstration sites. The addition of Ayr College to the partnership brings a new area of expertise in the aerospace and composite materials sector.

For further details contact the
Project Co-ordinator, Alan McAfee,
alan.mcafee@nrc.ac.uk