We have a new team member; Abhijeet Patil who has joined our design team…and he holds a unique position in the company:
He is the first of our Designers not have got his Masters from Sheffield Hallam University!
Educated in India and the UK, Abhi brings enhanced engineering design skills and an international perspective of Design.
Welcome Abhi.
Well done to Amy Williams; a terrific achievement for Great Britain and for the sport of Skeleton Bob.
Clearly we are very diappointed for Shelley and Kristan as we know the mountains (financial and political) they have to climb to simply get themselves on to the track. Add to this that they have a beautiful daughter to bring up too (remembering they have no partner to help in this…except for uncle Richard of course!); they should both be very proud.
Richard, Dan, Mike and Kristan should also be very proud of what they are achieving with Bromley Technologies…and may it long continue; to get two athletes in the top 6 is a fantastic achievement for the Sheffield based team.
We look forward to seeing them back at the top of the sport in 2014 (unless Kristan’s retired of course!!!)
Tonight (18th February) is the first run of the Skeleton Bob at the Winter Olympics (starts around midnight GMT). As sponsors of their team we wish them every success and we are proud of everything they, and the team, have achieved.
Go for it guys!
We had the inaugral meeting of Designed in Sheffield last night. It is an initiative to get national recognition of the great design that is behind the great manufacturing in Sheffield; which is already recognised by the Made in Sheffield marque.
We hope the marque will give the Product/Industrial/Architectural Design sector, in our region, the opportunity to tell the world why Sheffield is an important centre of excellence in Design.
It is pleasing to report that both of our Universities are fully on board with the initiative too.
Fripp Design and Research are proud to announce that we are now technology sponsors of Bromley Technologies Ltd ‘Formula Ice 2010 program’, the team behind Kristan Bromley and Shelley Rudman, our Skeleton Bob team at the Winter Olympics.
From all of us at Fripp Design and Research we wish both Shelley and Kristan all our best. They both have a real chance of bringing home gold so please find time to support them.
For further details of their Olympic adventure please visit www.bromley-aet.com/news.php
We received this by email today and I quote
“The finance director of flooring manufacturer James Halstead issued a stark warning on the state of UK manufacturing at last night’s North West Finance Director Awards. Gordon Oliver, who beat tough competition from Speedy Hire and JD Sports to win the Finance Director of a PLC award, told the audience: “It’s difficult to be in manufacturing, which is a dying business in this country. There are no incentives – it’s a bit sad.”
Without wanting to be too political, the UK Government has invested in Innovation in this country (see our last blog as an example) and Innovation needs manufacturing and manufacturing means sales, sales means cash and cash means investment and so on.
We need to STOP using the term “British Manufacturing” and change it to “British Innovation” or as we’ve previously stated “British Manuvation”!!!
Business Link Yorkshire have just announced a new Innovation Voucher scheme complimenting the £3,000, fully funded scheme that Fripp Design and Research are already delivering.
The new Innovation Voucher is for £7000; however, unlike the £3,000 Innovation Voucher which is fully funded, the higher value Innovation Voucher is 50/50 funded. In other words, if you have a £14,000 development project, you can get 50% of the cost funded through Business Link Yorkshire.
Clients can have up to £10,000 of Innovation Vouchers. For example:
1) Two fully funded £3,000 Innovation Vouchers or
2) One fully funded £3,000 Innovation Voucher and a 50/50 funded £7,000 Innovation Voucher
To find out more, please vists our site dedicated to Innovation Vouchers.
We recently attended a seminar of Yorkshire based Manufacturing Businesses; the focus being on the future of manufacturing in 2010. One of the key messages that came from the seminar was the general opinion of the lack of support by the Government for the UK manufacturing base.
It occured to us that some of the audience were missing a fundamental point. Manufacturing is a consequence of doing something; the something being Innovation. If the UK had, purely, a manufacturing base then we would simply manufacture widgets at a more economic cost than our competitors…and as we all know, the cost base in Asia means we can never compete in simple manufacture.
Fripp Design and Research have a number of product in development which we, originally, wanted to licence; but this has proven to be problematic. Therefore we will manufacture our widgets…does this ‘pidgeon hole’ us as a manufacturer? We hope not; our business is built on Innovation and we understand the need to constantly innovate to give us that competitive edge.
From our experience, this is what the vast majority of UK ‘Manufacturers’ do…they Innovate to give their customer ‘value add’ and are paid by delivering widgets which the customer buys.
Maybe the Government (irrespective of its colour) needs to rethink the term manufacture; The current Government understands the need for Innovation and has invested significantly in Innovation (which we have benefited from) but still uses the term manufacturing when, in fact they mean Innovation.
In other words, the term manufacturing is irrelevant…we need a new term…”Innofacture”…”Manuvate”; whatever it should be…you read and saw it here first!
Fripp Design and Research supply Innovation Vouchers in the Yorkshire, Humber and North East regions of the United Kingdom (we hope to supply other regions in the future; unfortunately some regions exclude private sector organisations which is a real shame…but that is for another blog!).
An Innovation Voucher is worth up to £3000 and we do get asked what can be achieved for £3K.
The new site concentrates on a specific type of product development we refer to as 3D Rendering. It is a process which takes a clients idea, forms a brief, involves extensive research, concept/sketching and CAD to create photorealistic imagery which is put into real world context and scenarios. We often call this first stage prototyping as it gives the client and their stakeholders a very cost effective way of understanding the features and benefits of what is being proposed.
To find out more about 3D rendering from Fripp Design and Research, please visit www.3d-render.co.uk.
We’ve recently applied to participate in a residential workshop being run by the Technology Strategy Board on the development of Plastic Electronics. They are particularly interested in the views of the design community and we would like to get involved.
As always you have to fill in war and peace for the TSB but have you ever heard such a daft question in your life and we quote:
The demonstrator workshop requires intensive , interactive work with strangers over 3 days in a residential setting away from the familiar territory of work or home. Please outline your suitability to this setting and what you expect to gain out or participation. Maximum 700 characters (approx 100 words).
This is our reply:
This is a ridiculous question. If you really have to ask this question, then I question the quality of participants you will get at the workshop. If this stops my participation…so be it!
It would seem to us that the TSB is out of touch with the realities of running SME businesses in the UK…Maybe we should feel scared to pick up the phone and speak to a potential client in case he says no and we, then feel offended…perish the thought!
RSS Feed