This list is in date order, with the earliest at the top.

The side panel shows the presentations which are on the website, with the most recent at the top.

• 1966 Mathematical Problems in Chemical Reactor Simulation, ICI Lecture Series, Oxford University, 8th November.
• 1968 Computation of Reaction Stability, ICI Lecture Series, Oxford University, 4th December.
• 1968 Integration of Kinetics Equations, National Physical Laboratory, 8th December.
• 1973 Modelling and Control of Chemical Reactors, Vebechem, Antwerp, 29th November.
• 1974 Control of Fibres Process, The Institution of Mechanical Engineers Conference, Computers in the control of production, 9th December 1974.
• 1975 Towards a Fully Numerate Chemicals Technology, Dept of Chemical Engineering, ETH, Zurich, 22nd January.
• 1976 Application of Research to Industrial Problems with Particular Reference to the Determination of Complex Reaction Mechanisms, Dept of Chemical Engineering, Cambridge, 11th November.
• 1978 Systems and the Design of Process Technology, University of East Anglia, 2nd July-16th August.
• 1978 Systems Technology in the Process Industries, Imperial College/ICI Joint Symposium, 11th October.
• 1978 Control of large-scale manufacture of synthetic fibres, Imperial College/ICI Joint Symposium, 11th October.
• 1979 Plastics Processing and Engineering, UMIST, 2nd March.
• 1980 Review of Scientific Developments Applied to the Polymer Industry, 5th March.
• 1980 Scale and Quality Factors in the design of Polymerisation Reactors, University of Technology, Loughborough, 31st October.
• 1980 Introduction to Polymeric Materials, National Centre of Tribology, 26th-27th November.
• 1981 The Economic Significance of Polymeric Materials, Inaugural Lecture, UMIST, 17th February.
• 1982 The Place of Polymers in Undergraduate Engineering Courses, SERC Polymer Engineering Directorate Summer School, Manchester Poly, 13th-16th September.
• 1983 Teaching Polymer Engineering to Engineering Undergraduates, SERC Polymer Engineering Directorate 2nd Bien Review Meeting, Loughborough, 11th-13th April.
• 1983 Polymer Engineering Research Opportunities, SERC Presentation, UMIST, 9th June.
• 1985 Computer-Aided Engineering in Education, Engineering Professors’ Conference, March.
• 1985 A Model of Confined Impingement Mixing applied to Reaction Injection Mixing, Dept of Mechanical Engineering & Manufacture, Bradford University, 11th March.
• 1985 Future Computing provision for the Engineering Academic Community, SERC Engineering Board, 21st October.
• 1985 Control of Fibre Structures in FR-Thermoplastic Extrusions, to Dow Chemicals in Horgen, 8th November.
• 1986 SERC Design Initiative, SERC Presentation, Applied Mechanics Community, 15th April and 13th May.
• Lecture to the National Centre of Tribology, Risley, on Polymer Types and their General Properties.
• 1986 Polymers in the Design of Consumer Products, Thorn EMI Conference, 16th April.
• 1986 Management Development for Scientists and Technologists, Industry Year Conference, Manchester Business School, 10th July.
• 1987 SAFIRE Presentation to Ametex AG, 2nd July.
• 1987 New Processes for Composites Manufacture, Lucas Engineering & Systems, Technical Centre, 1st June.
• 1987 Manufacturing with Polymeric Materials, Unisys/AMTRI seminar on Computer Integrated Manufacture, St Paul de Vence, 31 August-2nd September.
• 1988 Presentation on Process Pathways Analysis to Dept of Trade and Industry, 24th February.
• 1989 Seminar on Physical Analogy and Numerical Methods in Processing Polymers, UMIST, 23rd January.
• 1989 Eureka Presentation at BCRA, Stoke-on-Trent, 25th November.
• 1990 Polymer Composites: New Product Manufacturing Technology in Aerospace Industry, Link Presentation to Lucas Industries Seminar, Shirley, 31st January.
• 1991 How to improve British State Education Quickly and at No Cost, More Matter Less ArtCampaign for Real Education Annual Conf, London, 14th April.
• 1992 Systems Technology applied to Process Development, at United Biscuits Research Centre, High Wycombe, 6th October.
• 1992 Technology in Schools, Engineering Professors’ Conference, Holly Royde, 25th November.
• 1992 Self Assembling Fibre Reinforcement (SAFIRE) of Polymeric Materials, Cookson Technical Centre, Woodstock, 14th December.
• 1993 Scale-up for production of the GRANEX process, Everite Group, South Africa, 6th May.
• 1993 Introducing UMIST Polymer Engineering to Industry, Interplas 93, NEC, 7-11 November.
• 1994 Integrated Design & Manufacture – the NEPPCO Approach, Preston Transtech Internation, Cardiff, 1st December.
• 1995 Design and Manufacture of Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites, University of Ljublyana, 21st September.
• 1996 Systems Technology Applied to Process Development, NEPPCO/LEONARDO program, Thompson Plastics/Arla Plastprodukter AB, Hull, 22-23 January.
• 1996 Introducing SAFIRE Polymer Composite Processes & Materials, Prosyma Research Ltd, 2nd Ed.
• 1996 Improving Competitiveness and Managing Change in SMEs, TDC Seminar, Durham, 20th November.
• 1997 Presentation to Mr Mark Brenner, General Manager (Operations) BPTA Services Ltd, Prof Bae, Prof Park, Mr Lee, Samsun Inst of Science & Technology, Korea, with J M Methven, J D Tonkin and P Hunter, 12th June
• 1997 Carl Klason Memorial PPS Keynote Lecture, “Mechanisms and Results from Injection Moulding, Blow Moulding, Sheet Extrusion for Thermoforming and Pipe Extrusion”, PPS European Meeting, Gothenburg, Sweden, 26th August
• 1997 New Products, Improved Processes – Real Jobs, to Parliamentary Manufacturing Industry Group, Houses of Parliament, 25th November.
• 1998 Foresight in Business, Goldsmith Hall, London, 6th February.
• 2000 Strix Presentation, 25th September.
• 2001 Strix Visit, 3rd April.
• 2001 Presentation to Action Plan Board re PDCU, 31st July
• 2001 Smartform presentation to Marks & Spencer and S&S, 5th December
• 2002 Rollet Presentation, 30th January.
• 2002 NEPPCO AGM, 24th April.
• 2002 SAFIRE presentations to Amidex, July, September, 24th-25th October and November.
• 2002 Interplas
• 2002 Working with the UMIST Centre for Manufacture, 10th December.
• 2003 Modern Materials in the Service of Man, Worth Probus Meeting, Poynton, Cheshire, 9th January.
• 2003 “Where we are and where we are going” opening of STRIX Centre, January.
• 2003 NW Manufacturing Exhibition, Reebok Stadium, Bolton, 5-6 November.
• 2008 The Development of Innovative Products and Processes for small and medium-sized enterprises, Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey, 9th October
• 2008 Self-organisation of Discrete Fibre Reinforcements in Polymer Flows, Cambridge University Dept of Chemical Engineering, 5th November.
• 2011 Alternative careers in Chemical Engineering, presentation to Cambridge University and East Anglia branches of Institution of Chemical Engineers, 17th May

Presentation to Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey

S F Bush

The roles of the enterprise, university and government: Introduction

The University Centre for Manufacture at Manchester and its precursor worked in collaboration with SMEs and government agencies.

Results have been reviewed for a ten year period from 1996 to 2005.

The Techno-economic Model (TEM) has been developed over the same period to aid decision-making about which projects to support.

The TEM has predictive power and shows the importance of the “Stoichiometric Principle”.

The Stoichiometric Principle

As in the air-fuel ratio for internal combustion engines, this determines the optimum ratios of resources for:

• Product R&D and Process R&D
• Capital investment and total R&D
• Marketing and Production

Reports (1) and (2) to DTI Project No. 3530, Techno-economic and Process Models, 2008-2011

S F Bush

To see Report (1) please click on the link Nercor.

To see Report (2) please click on the link Nercor2.

Paper to the Smart Materials Workshop, Institute of Materials and Qinetiq, London

S F Bush

Abstract

To be useful, a polymer composite, like any other material, must be formable into a product able to maintain its shape within specified tolerances under the likely imposed loads over a given temperature range, all at an acceptable economic price. When discrete fibres are used with thermoplastic polymers, the distribution, orientation, wetting, and length of the fibres in different parts of the product are all features which must be controlled if the product is to maintain its shape and functions in service. The paper discusses these factors and shows how the self-forming principle can be used to extend the range of shapes which can be made economically.

References

[1] D R Blackburn and O K Ademosu, Poly Proc Soc. 9th Ann Mtg, Manchester (5-8 April 1993). Paper 06-14.

[2] S F Bush, F Yilmaz and P F Zhang, Impact Strengths of Injection Moulded Polypropylene Long Glass Fibre Composites, Plastic Rubber Composites 24 (1995) 139-147.

[3] S F Bush, Long Glass Fibre Reinforcement of Thermoplastics, Int Polymer Proc 14 (1999) 280-290.

[4] F G Torres and S F Bush, Sheet Extrusion and Thermoforming of Discrete Long Glass Fibre Reinforced Polypropylene, Composites Part A 31 (2000), 1289-94.

[5] S F Bush, J D Tonkin and F G Torres, Discrete Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer Composites: Results from Blow Moulding and Thermoforming, (2003) 19th Ann Mtg Poly Proc Soc, Melbourne, Australia.

[6] D R Blackburn and O K Ademosu, Proc 9th Intl Conf Reinf Fibre Composites (2002) pp 402-07.

[7] D R Blackburn, S F Bush, J M Methven, A Neuendorf, UK Pat No. GB 2,369,322 (June 6 2004) “Self-forming Polymer Composites”.

[8] K J Jamieson, M.Phil, UMIST, August 2004.

Paper to International Polymer Materials Engineering Conference, Shanghai, China, 18th-21st September 2005

S F Bush

Abstract

All successful process technologies are rate dependent^[1]. Generally speaking quality of product, however defined, decreases as processing rates increase, but the point at which quality is unacceptable varies with the polymer matrix, the nature and amounts of additives and any fibre reinforcement, and machinery use.

The efficiency of polymer processing, expressed in terms of the quantities of polymer and additives used to make a given amount of product also decreases as processing rates increase. Efficiency is also greatly affected by the manufacturing systems technology in which the polymer process is embedded.

The paper sets out to explore those factors in a polymer technology which determine the rate/quality and rate/efficiency boundaries; in a phrase, to answer the question, “How much faster can we go?” To do this, the paper splits the relevant factors affecting the answer into two groups:

• E – Equipment dependent mechanisms, principally bulkflow, mixing, and heat transfer (whose rates depend mainly on the power input)
• M – Molecular and supra-molecular mechanisms (whose rates depend primarily on temperature, pH and microflows).

 
The principal quality factors affected by factors E and M are also split into two groups: (A) Appearance (e.g. gloss, haze, texture, colour); (B) Bulk properties (i.e. impact and tensile strengths, creep and thermal resistances); (G) Geometrical factors (distortion, dimensional variability). For all these quality measures, uniformity is a basic requirement.

Data is reported from four quite different processes both in this Laboratory and in the factories of its partner companies. This data has been used to obtain some of the rate limiting steps in quantitative terms for a number of the common process technologies: organic/inorganic compounding/alloying, reaction injection moulding, pultrusion, and rotational moulding. These rate limiting values indicate where new developments in either E or M will facilitate increases of production rate at given quality levels.

Reference

[1] S F Bush, Scale, order and complexity in polymer processing, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (200) 214 Part E, 217-232.

Paper to the 7th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, Glasgow, 1st-4th July 2005

Published by the Institution of Chemical Engineers, vol 83, No A6, pp 646-654

S F Bush

Abstract

This paper reports both practical and theoretical results from some 82 projects conducted with 70 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the last 8 years. The companies are found in the plastics, chemicals, food, metal fabrication and electrical components sectors of manufacturing industry. The objective of the projects has been to develop new science-based products and/or processes, or improvements to these – occasionally all of these things.

The initial choice of a project and its subsequent management have been subject to a specific techno-economic assessment procedure evolved by the Centre for Manufacture’s partnership with NEPPCO Ltd – a company specialising in research and development for the process industries. As described in the paper, this procedure now deploys a techno-economic model (TEM) which links quantitatively the inputs and outputs of: research and design, investment and production, sales and marketing, over any given time period. The TEM allows market share and return on investment trajectories to be generated for an innovative change under various assumptions about the competition and the company management’s own characteristics. The paper demonstrates the importance of what may be termed the stoichiometric principle of innovation, i.e. optimum financial performance requires the resources devoted to product design, process efficiency, investment in plant and in selling, to be kept in strict proportion to each other.

Paper to the VII SMESME Conference, Stimulating Manufacturing Excellence in Small and Medium Enterprises, Strathclyde University, Glasgow, 12th-15th June 2005.

S F Bush and C Doidge

To see the paper, please click on the link “Techno-Economic Model” which will take you to the Britain Watch website.

Article published in the Parliamentary Monitor: Blue Skies supplement, June 2005

S F Bush

The loss of around 600,000 jobs from manufacturing in the last 8 years has created a void filled not so much by the private services sector (where employment has fallen in the last two years) but by the creation of around 700,000 jobs in the public sector paid by the taxpayer. At the same time, the goods trade deficit has ballooned from £12 billion in 1997 to over £40 billion in 2004, the £30 billion difference being almost exactly the added value output from those lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs.

Trade in goods is crucial to a country like Britain, where imports plus exports amount to over 50% of GDP (less than half this proportion in the USA). Manufactures account for over 60% of our exports with another 5-10% in technical services dependent on them, mirroring pretty well the world trade pattern. Among those countries where trade is of the order of 50% of GDP or more, export sales of goods is a good marker of the added value of all production.

The graph Annual Export Sales shows annual export value divided by annual industrial R&D expenditure over a period of 25 years.  As may be seen, three main competitor countries including the UK have converged to a value around 20.  (The USA is much the worst on this measure because only a relatively small proportion of its GDP is exported.)  Evidently Britain has a massive goods trading deficit not so much because its present manufacturing industry is uncompetitive, but because it is too small for the goods appetite of its population.

Moreover, manufacturing industry is not just the principal means by which we pay our overseas creditors, it is also the leading performer in terms of labour productivity.  Of the three output components of GDP – labour productivity in industry has consistently been around 35-50% above the average for the whole economy, while public services are around 20% below, with private services about 5-10% below.

What can be done to arrest and reverse the dramatic shrinkage in manufacturing of the last 8 years or so?  To recover the £30 billion of lost output would require at current labour and capital productivities about an additional 0.5 million people, additional capital of around £30 billion (or about three years of current investment), matched by about £1.5 billion of additional annual expenditure on industrial R&D.  Like the people and the investment, this increase would have to take place mainly in the SME sector.

But how exactly?  Business expenditure on manufacturing R&D by industry is around £9 billion (depending on definition) employing about 140,000 people, of whom possibly 60,000 are qualified scientists and engineers (QSEs).  The lion’s share of QSE employment in business R&D is in the 2,500 firms with over 250 employees; possibly 5,000 firms in the medium category may have one QSE in R&D.

Of the 114,000 firms in the small category (under 50 employees) possibly one in 20 firms may have one QSE in R&D.  While R&D employment in industry fell along with general industrial employment by about 15% over the 10 years to 2002, publicly funded employment of QSEs in higher education R&D rose by over 50% in the same period, to around 50,000, approaching if not now exceeding the 60,000 QSEs in Manufacturing industry R&D.

The Centre for Manufacture with its partner consortium company NEPPCO Ltd have conducted around 80 R&D projects with SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) over the last 8 years, split about 2:1 between processes and products.  Of those 50 projects which have reached some sort of maturity, the lifetime added value to R&D investment multiplier has averaged about 15, which is consistent with the export multiplier on the graph.

This demonstrates that this model of an inner university-based core of permanent QSEs plus an outer ring of temporary research engineers passing through, plus a permanent network of businesses supplying the expertise which a university centre won’t normally have (marketing, prototyping, actual production facilities) can offset the scale disadvantages which 122,000 SMEs suffer from by comparison with the 2,500 large firms.

Our experience shows, as does that of many international studies, that only R&D directed on a continuing basis at commercial objectives has significant economic results, wherever the initial inspiration comes from.  Of all the competitor countries in the graph with the exception of Italy, Britain, however, devotes the highest proportion of its national R&D expenditure to the public sector (over 50%).

To support the postulated £30 billion recovery of lost output, manufacturing industry R&D needs to have around 10,000 more QSEs devoted to it, principally in the SME sector.  Arguably this effort should be organised around the product pipeline concept (as employed in pharmaceuticals) with matching process optimisation.

Given the present distribution of QSEs between the private and public sectors, the people for this endeavour can only come from the universities.  For this to happen, there needs to be an extension of the research assessment (RAE) criteria to allow original unpublished work in industry by university researchers to count alongside published work.  Without this shift in emphasis for at least part of the publicly funded research, the taxpayer will be less and less inclined to pay for it.

Paper published by Colloids and Surfaces, A:Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, Volume 263 (2005) 370-378

S F Bush and O K Ademosu

Abstract

Solid polymer foams are well-known materials used to provide insulation, packaging impact protection, low slip shoe soling and so on. This paper examines the nature of the foams produced when combined with the process of rotomoulding, long established as the means by which hollow polymer shapes are made. Rotomoulding refers to the fact that a mould with a meltable or sinterable powder inside it is heated and rotated about two axes at right angles to distribute the powder over the inside of the mould to form a skin. This heating phase is followed by a cooling phase.

The aim of the research reported here is to determine the conditions under which a holow moulding with a skin made from one polymer powder, in this case low density polyethylene, can be made at the same time as a foam made from another polymer is formed to fill the cavity but not to penetrate through the skin. The foam in this case is polystyrene with around 6% ^w/_w n-pentane pre-absorbed. The whole system is referred to as the Rotofoam© process.

Experiments on both the laboratory and the full industrial scales are reported. The Rotofoam laboratory kinetics rig allows the foam development to be seen by eye and by camera as a glass mould undergoes the two axes rotations. Temperatures inside the foam and in the mould are monitored via a system of slip rings and hollow axles.

Examination by SEM allows the micro-development of the foam to be seen and linked to a simple shoebox-like model of a foam cell which correlates well with overall foam density measurements. The model also ties together the heat flow needed to expand the foam and heat the polystyrene and polyethylene, with the heat transfer rates calculated from the material conductivities, the material path lengths and the imposed temperature difference between mould and foam.

Finally, the paper reports the results obtained by the use of foam control agents – hydrated salts in this case – which by release of steam during the heating phase act to retard the pentane-driven foam expansion until the polyethylene skin is formed. The diffusion of the steam through the cell walls into the foam cavities is briefly discussed.

Article published in the Journal of Industrial & Systems Engineering

S F Bush

The academic purpose of the Centre is the development of a science of manufacture for which the experimental foundations are derived from direct engagement in process and product research, and from factory and business operations. The theoretical framework for this endeavour is the four-level system of molecular processes, mechanical equipment, factory control systems, and company management.

This academic purpose is motivated by the long-term problems in British manufacture expressed in familiar fashion by the following contemporary quotations:

“The good news is that we have a remarkable science base in the UK, but we are not very good at linking it up with industry to reap the (economic) rewards”^[1].

“In general, a productivity gap exists between UK and US manufacturing. Boosting productivity in the UK is vital to improving competitiveness and overall living standards”^[2].

These are two facets of an enduring problem, bearing directly on the country’s future^[3] which, by its complexity and subtlety both technical and human, have resisted so far all attempts to solve it generally. It is surely worthy of research in a university whose research range stretches from nanoscience to marketing and which is located in the largest concentration of manufacturing enterprises in Britain.

Of course the Centre for Manufacture is not alone in its efforts to address aspects of this linked problem, which in any case, like most serious diseases, is multifaceted and varied in its incidence.   But in our view CfM has settled on the most comprehensive approach yet tried, aimed mainly at the most intractable part of our manufacturing industries, namely the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

We are focused on the process industries (which represent about 60% of all manufacturing). That is to say on those industries – specifically polymers, food, chemicals, metals, fibres and plastics – where materials are changed both in chemical composition and physical form.   We also have a major focus on healthcare as an expanding market for our process industries, and on electronic systems as an enabling technology, particularly for embedded control as part of process and product designs^[4].

Manufacturing processes for the above industries have a substantially common research base – particularly in the fields of mixing, rheology, reaction kinetics, physio-chemical interfaces, energy transfer and systems technology. Polymer composite materials and processes exemplify all these elements, – are continually expanding in scope and application, – and represent an area where the Centre has an international research position^{[5] [6]} and a track record of successful process innovation* which is being added to each year**.

Most ideas for new products and processes come, in fact, from within manufacturing industry and its immediate customer base. However, whether originating from within or without – a university or independent inventor for instance – there will be a long knowledge-and-cash intensive path to traverse before a commercial product or functioning process is obtained. For this reason, an integral part of CfM’s programme has been to construct a unique techno-economic (TE) mathematical model, using the cell-balance principle^[3], which connects the research design, production and sales functions of a business in quantitative terms.

The TE model in effect provides the intellectual scaffolding for our four-level system approach to the basic manufacturing problem alluded to by the quotations above^{[1] [2]}. Field data for this model are progressively being obtained both from research-based new processes applied in FTSE-sized companies at home and abroad and from the 70+ regionally-based SME projects which the Centre has run under its Innovation, Strategy and Technology Assessment (ISTA) programmes in the last 5 years^[7]. These programmes are run in part with NEPPO Ltd which with CfM disposes of the resources needed to traverse the design and innovation pathway in the plastics and allied sectors, thus providing an established organisational model for other industrial sectors. NEPPCO Ltd has now spun off its own subsidiary SURGIPLAS to develop its own and CfM’s innovative ideas in the healthcare field.

There are currently three new innovation areas – one process, two product – which are increasingly engaging the Centre’s attention. New processes for the conversion of waste materials into saleable materials are a pressing environmental need. These new processes are likely to involve all of the common research base defined above, as well as the TE model. Our embryo ‘Rubicon’ process for combining waste tyre rubber with cement to give a concrete with some elastic properties is a case in point, based as it is on our CIRRAC rubber – calcium carbonate – polymer alloys.

In the product field, the pending “End of Life (EOL)” legislation has the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in (consumer) product design, away from maximising short-term value with its throw-away corollary, towards maximising maintainability and component replaceability. To a considerable degree, new research under this heading will feed into the second area of product innovation opportunity, namely the Centre’s “product pipeline” concept^{[4] [8]}, where, as in the pharmaceutical industry, the market is anticipated and research and design are done in advance. There is potentially a wide gain from this approach: where ideas emanating from university research groups or specifically from the ‘pipeline’ objective meet the TE criteria, there will be a very high chance of public sector funding for the follow-on-research.

Overall then, CfM’s academic vision is to establish a new corpus of knowledge in the fields described above, using the standard Baconian methodology, and having a particular relevance to manufacturing enterprise^[8]. It will do this mainly in partnership with SMEs – and if opportunity presents – with other groups in the University***. It will continue to seek research contracts and grants-in-aid at levels around the four-year average (£190,000 per annum per academic excluding the £400,000 STRIX grant in 2001/02^[9].

To accelerate progress towards what is an ambitious goal, the Centre will seek to increase its academic establishment to at least the number (4) foreseen when it was set up^[4]. In the light of the accelerating flow of results, the Centre will further accelerate their publication. It will continue also to disseminate the basic concepts, and where appropriate the results, through the medium of its final year undergraduate courses^[4] [8] – principally Engineering Foresight, Product Design with Polymers & Composites, Process Manufacture – and its Technology for Business post-graduate short courses.

Footnotes

* Pre-2004: SMARTFORM, SAFIRE, GRANEX, MAP, CIRRAC, ROTOFOAM processes and materials.

** In 2004: RUBICON (a waste tyre rubber compound), ROLLET (for food distribution), BIOKAB (for healthcare)

*** At present: Textiles, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and the Medical School.

References

[1] Professional Engineering 17 (14) 18 August 2004 p.35.

[2] “Manufacturing at the Crossroads” – Engineering Employers Federation report, December 2001.

[3] S F Bush “On the Importance of Manufacture to the Economy”, Trans Manchester Stat Soc 169 (1999) 1-46.

[4] Centre for Manufacture “Future Development”, CfM report, April 2004 (for Faculty Working Party.)

[5] E.g. (1) Bush, S F: References in “Scale, Order and Complexity” in Polymer Processing. Proc Inst Mech Eng 214E, pp217-232. Invited Paper for Millennium Edition 2000.

[6] E.g. (2) Methven, J M et al “Manufacture of Fibre-Reinforced Composites by Microwave Assisted Pultrusion (MAP”, Polymer Composites 21 (4) (2000) 586-594.

[7] G D Davidson “The competitiveness of UK manufacturing and the role of innovation” M.Phil thesis, CfM, UMIST 2004.

[8] “Where we are and where we are going”, CfM report (Jan 2003) (for official opening of STRIX Centre).

[9] Centre for Manufacture “Statistical Record” Rev IV, 22 June 2004.