Knit e-pedia: about the industry innovation unit

Industry innovation unit

The Industry Innovation Unit of the William Lee Innovation Centre works with technical textile and related fibre based companies to innovate new products.

The Industry Innovation Unit works with companies, especially SMEs, by raising awareness of the threats and opportunities facing technical textiles, mentoring companies using a cluster approach and helping them to adopt new technology to create innovative products.

Awareness Raising Methodology

• K4I has developed a new Awareness Raising Methodology with particular reference to the technical textiles industry. This tool enables baseline awareness to be measured and changes to be recorded once people have worked through the specially created 'Awareness Raising' module. This module is part of the K4I project's Knowledge Bank.
• Awareness raising is also taking place using conventional methods, such as seminars for targeted technical textile groups and press activity.
• As part of the project's outreach work, site visits are being made to technical textile and related companies to raise awareness and introduce them to the benefits of being involved in the project.

Mentoring/Cluster Approach

The Industry Innovation Unit's research focus is on engineered advanced knitted structures. Technology platforms, currently in development, include 3D modelling systems for biomedical textiles, health monitoring through knitted sensors, smart implants and intelligent wound-management systems, and advanced protective clothing and equipment.

Because most textiles companies in the UK are SMEs with insufficient resources to conduct their own multidisciplinary research and development, the Unit can play a vital role translating innovative research into practical solutions for industry. Because this work requires the bringing together of aspects of several disciplines the mentoring must reflect this multidisciplinary approach.

Clusters of expertise have been developed in three specialist areas of technical textiles ie medical; protective; electro. Some work has also been carried out in fabric assembly. These clusters are made up of mentors working with companies in the specialist areas. Each cluster involves companies working on different aspects of the innovation. For example to produce the 'Scan to Knit' medical stocking product it is necessary to have a series of innovations, each protected by IPR, and fully tested and compliant with health and safety requirements. The innovations have included a special feed for the knitting machines and a special 3D limb scanner.

The Innovations

A number of products are now coming to market as a result of the K4I project. Intellectual property is protected by patent and products are produced under licence.

A new technology platform developed at the William Lee Innovation Centre, Scan2Knit, was chosen as one of the best innovations of 2006 by Future Materials Magazine. See the Scan2Knit Case Study.

Another of the project's Industrial Associates, Polyco, recently launched the 'Metallica' glove at an Industry Exhibition in Birmingham this year. See the Polyco Case Study.

A pre-launch of the Health Monitoring Vest is planned by another Industrial Associate, Smartlife, in Autumn 2007.