Creating your question(s)

Company questions posed to AIMday Data for Manufacturing will be communicated via this website to academics and researchers throughout the University of Edinburgh, allowing them to select the questions they feel they can add most value to according to their individual expertise.

When phrasing your question(s), please ensure that they are concrete and clear (with no abbreviations) and that they can be discussed openly. This style of questions work best for the AIMday format.

It helps to add context and background to your question(s), so that it is clear what exactly your challenge is and how an academic could potentially help find the solution.

We also recommend that at least two company representatives are available to join the discussion of each of that company’s questions in order to have a better balance in the session. The company representatives should be well versed in the topic of the question(s) submitted and be prepared to provide further context and background.

We welcome up to three questions from each participating company or organisation.

Some examples of possible questions are listed below. You are welcome to contact us if you need help phrasing an appropriate question.

  • How can we optimise our supply chain based on the data collected from automatic sensors and other sources?
  • How can we leverage legacy data sets that are often in different formats and/or incomplete and combine it with new data to generate value?
  • How can we use data to better track the life cycle of assets and to predict failure modes?
  • How can product modelling help reduce the costs of production and packaging?
  • With new technology available, how can we design an optimal delivery route?
  • How do we embed a culture of data-driven innovation in our organisation?
  • How can data help support decreasing investment in working capital and stock?
  • What is the best way to manage large amounts of data stemming from different sources, of varying formats and existing in a very silo-oriented organisation?
  • How can we use data to track the ability of assets to perform their required function efficiently whilst protecting health, safety and the environment?
  • What innovations in data are likely to be successful for optimising our existing business activities?