NIACE can offer Industries benefits such as:

• An opportunity to reduce development times


• Shared responsibility for undertaking projects


• Potential increased access to funding


• Access to equipment for manufacture
  and testing not currently available to
  the company


• Opportunities to “try out”
  different manufacturing technologies in order
  to explore cost / performance issues


• The opportunity for companies to place
  their employees within the centre as the
  work is taking place


• New knowledge and skills for the company which they do not get when a product is just
  delivered to them


• Access to other companies in different aspects of advanced engineering i.e. manufacturers,
  designers, end users etc


• Access to seminars and workshops on new technologies, opportunities etc.

The centre can also bridge the gap between the difficult Technology Readiness levels 4-6 (University research TRL 1-3, Commercial/product 7-9):

• Strong industry pull from partners,
  especially OEMs


• Ability to try extreme ideas away
  from constraints of production
  factories


• Access to University expertise on
  process fundamentals etc.


• Sharing of knowledge and best
  practice between partners


• Demonstration of capability on
  real components using production
  standard equipment and tooling


• Geometric and material validation
  on site with quick turnaround


• Co-location of engineers to enable
  process knowledge transfer


• Ready-made consortia for
  funding bids.