Navigating the funding and business support landscape can often feel daunting. At our May networking meeting, Paul Hughes from the North East Growth Hub provided welcome clarity on a major regional initiative designed specifically for small and medium-sized manufacturers: the Made Smarter Adoption North East programme.
If your business is losing time to manual entry, struggling to meet customer demand, or lacking the real-time data needed to make quick operational decisions, digital technology could be the solution.
The Made Smarter programme cuts through the noise to help manufacturing enterprises plan, fund, and execute their digital transformation journeys.
What is the Made Smarter Programme?
Made Smarter is a government-backed initiative aimed at driving growth, productivity, and efficiency by helping small and medium-sized manufacturers adopt industrial digital technologies. The support is structured across a straightforward three-stage journey:
Digital Health Check: A fully funded, one-to-one diagnostic session with a specialist technology adviser to look at your current processes, identify priority areas, and outline where digital tools could add the most value.
Digital Transformation Workshops: Three strategic sessions focused on creating a clear digital roadmap for your business. These workshops help you map out operational inefficiencies, understand the return on investment, and navigate change management for your team.
Implementation and Funding: Working alongside an industrial digital technology specialist to put your plans into practice.
Expert Advice and Tangible Funding Support
A major barrier for many growing companies isn't the lack of technical ambition, but the capital required to make it happen. Made Smarter bridges this gap by offering impartial advice alongside direct financial support:
Expert Consultancy: Access to specialist technology advisers who help you weigh up the benefits, costs, and practicalities of implementation.
Technical Advice Grants: Grants of up to £3,500 to secure expert technical consultancy.
Equipment and Software Grants: Match-funded grants of up to £20,000 (covering up to 50% of the overall cost) to help you purchase and implement new hardware, software, or advanced manufacturing equipment.
Workforce Development: Funding for student or graduate placements to bring digital interns into your business, alongside leadership development training delivered by North East universities.
Practical Applications for Your Operations
Digital transformation looks different for every workshop and factory floor. The scheme supports a wide array of emerging technologies tailored to your specific operational goals, including:
Data and Systems Integration: Moving away from manual spreadsheets to integrated Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to give your team real-time visibility over production.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): Deploying smart sensors to monitor machine health, track energy usage, and predict maintenance needs before downtime occurs.
Automation and Robotics: Automating repetitive, labour-intensive tasks to improve precision, consistency, and floor capacity.
Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing): Bringing prototyping capabilities in-house to test components and designs rapidly, cutting production cycles down from months to days.
Who is Eligible?
The Made Smarter Adoption North East programme is open to manufacturing SMEs operating across the North East Combined Authority area (including County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside, and Sunderland) as well as the Tees Valley Combined Authority area.
Take the Next Step
Whether you are looking to scale up production, improve component traceability, or take your first steps toward green manufacturing and net-zero targets, expert support is available locally.
To learn more about the scheme, view local manufacturing case studies, or complete a quick expression of interest form to start your digital roadmap, visit the North East Growth Hub Made Smarter page.
https://growthhub.northeast-ca.gov.uk/resource/made-smarter-adoption-north-east
