As part of the Government’s Faraday Battery Challenge, the £129 million UKBIC near Coventry aims to help industrial partners design, test and commercialise next-generation battery technologies when it officially opens in spring 2020. Initially focused on partnerships in the automotive sector, the centre is expected to expand into other industries over time.
UKBIC selected the cloud ERP solution from Infor following a rigorous tender. The decision was based on Infor’s ability to provide a single platform to support all aspects of the business — from quality control, traceability, production and finance to HR, talent management and analytics — as well as its long-term partnership approach. The fact that Infor MES, a solution to manage shop floor operations, could be deployed on-premise and work seamlessly with Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise, was also a huge benefit.
The platform will be implemented by leading global technology company HCL Technologies, which has more than 20 years of experience with Infor products and servicing customers.
Steve Hill, IT lead at UKBIC, said: “Embarking upon a genuinely green field project like this is rare and affords us a huge opportunity to select partners that share our innovative vision, and will support the complex nature of our facility. Of the providers we looked at, Infor could support every business process from a single platform to provide us with full visibility, capabilities to manage multi-faceted, highly sensitive data and new capabilities and tools as the organisation expands.”
Simon Quinton, Infor’s vice president and GM for UK & Ireland, added: “UKBIC really is at the leading edge of UK manufacturing, fostering innovation to attract new skills and investment in this crucial and developing field. We are proud to be supporting this innovation, alongside our alliance partner HCL, providing best-in-class cloud ERP capabilities to deliver robust processes, expedite decision-making, and to foster close stakeholder engagement.”
