Innovation

Innovation is a vital part of today's knowledge driven economy and is often the factor that separates successful businesses from those that fail. Ideas influence business in different ways depending on their significance, whether they are incremental improvements on known techniques or step-change technologies that bring disruptive change.

TWI has a rich and well-publicised history of innovation and invention dating back to the 1940s under the banner of the British Welding Research Association. Some notable highlights from the past include the CTOD method for measuring fracture toughness, the Wells wide plate test, high powered CO2 laser advances, friction stir welding, and many other innovations in the use of laser, friction, electron beam and other technologies related to joining and coating.

Current inventions being actively exploited at TWI include Surfi-Sculpt (a power beam material modification technique), Vitonano (bespoke nano materials) and novel methods for welding using electron beam technologies.

TWI supports the creation and development of ideas using a variety of different mechanisms and uses a stage gate process to manage exploitation effectively.

Our track record in the protection and successful exploitation of our own ideas has enabled the creation of core competencies within TWI. These can be leveraged for the benefit of Members and include competencies such as: