Professor Winifred Ijomah

Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management

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Personal statement

I am  Professor in the Department for Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management, (DMEM) and initiator and Technical director of the Scottish Institite for Remanufacture (SIR), a pan-Scotland expertise hub for Remanufacture hosted by the University of Strathclyde.  I gained a PhD in Remanufacturing from the University of Plymouth in 2002, and worked at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath, from 2004 to 2007. I also hold a masters degree in Advanced Manufacturing Management and a bachelors degree in Industrial Engineering.

I joined the University of Strathclyde as a lecturer in 2007 and was promoted to senior lecturer in 2011, to reader in 2017 then to professor in 2020. My research focuses on sustainable design and manufacturing, and to date has focussed on product end-of-life, particularly on remanufacturing. Here my research spans both product and process design with a view to enhancing remanufacturing potential.

Remanufacturing is a process of returning a used product to at least OEM original performance specification from the customer's perspective and giving the resultant product a warranty that is at least equal to that of a newly manufactured equivalent. Its key significance is that it harms the environment less than conventional manufacturing and can simultaneously have economic, environmental and societal benefits.

I initiated and lead the Remanufacturing Research Group at the University of Strathclyde, and have featured in more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and conference proceedings. I’m also the founder of the Springer Journal of Remanufacturing and was its Editor-in-Chief for 10 years-from its launch in 2011 until 2020.

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Area of Expertise

  • Remanufacturing
  • Sustainable Engineering
  • Product End-of-Life
  • Process Modelling

Prize And Awards

Best doctoral thesis paper award
Recipient
16/6/2015
Best paper in conference award
Recipient
2/12/2011
Emerald Literati Network 2010 Awards for journal paper Excellencer
Recipient
2010
Royal Academy of Engineering Best paper in conference award
Recipient
3/9/2004

More prizes and awards

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Publications

Increased Personal Protective and Medical Equipment Manufacturing to Fight COVID-19: An Egregious Approach for the Environment
Akano Damola, Ijomah Winifred
EcoDesign for Sustainable Products, Services and Social Systems I , pp. 349-363 (2024)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3818-6_24
Risks in circular business models innovation : a cross‐industrial case study for composite materials
Tuni Andrea, Gutteridge Fiona, Ijomah Winifred L, Mirpourian Maryam
Business Strategy and the Environment Vol 33, pp. 2771-2787 (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.3618
Evaluation and validation of Damage Assessment Tracking Criteria models within the sector of UK automotive remanufacturing
Harris RS, Ijomah WL, Windmill J
Journal of Cleaner Production Vol 414 (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137494
Risk assessment for circular business models : a fuzzy Delphi study application for composite materials
Tuni Andrea, Ijomah Winifred L, Gutteridge Fiona, Mirpourian Maryam, Pfeifer Sarah, Copani Giacomo
Journal of Cleaner Production Vol 389 (2023)
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.135722
Non-destructive testing of composite fibre materials with hyperspectral imaging – evaluative studies in the EU H2020 FibreEUse project
Yan Yijun, Ren Jinchang, Zhao Huan, Windmill James FC, Ijomah Winifred, Wit Jesper De, Freeden Justus Von
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement Vol 71, pp. 1-13 (2022)
https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2022.3155745
Remanufacturing of single-use medical devices : a case study on cross-border collaboration between the UK and Nigeria
Oturu Kingsley, Ijomah Winifred, Orr Andrew, Verpeaux Laura, Broadfoot Ben, Clark Stuart, Devine Ryan
Health and Technology Vol 12, pp. 273-283 (2022)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-022-00641-2

More publications

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Teaching

My teaching interests primarily focus on the theory and practical implementation of sustainable design and manufacturing for the MEng and MSc courses in Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management. I am also involved in teaching design, design and engineering applications, mechatronics design and applications, and advanced materials and production technology. I also supervise a number of students in individual projects.

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Research Interests

My research is interdisciplinary, spanning across engineering, business, to the social and applied sciences. The long term goal of my cross-disciplinary research is to continue furthering knowledge in sustainable production, specialising in developing concepts, tools and techniques to facilitate sustainable design and manufacture through remanufacture. Remanufacturing has recently become globally critical because of its great potential to address environmental concerns (need to reduce waste during the material extraction and manufacturing processes), legislation (international agreement to reduce products’ and manufacturing processes’ environmental impacts) and economics (remanufacture is often a quality and cost effective option). However, there is a paucity of remanufacturing understanding, information, publications, as well as tools and techniques. I currently lead the UK's largest remanufacturing research group, specialising in holistic, interdisciplinary, practitioner-based research. In the long term I intend to further develop, and build the capacity, of my research team in the area of sustainable design and manufacture through remanufacture.

Professional Activities

UK-China Remanufacturing Forum
Organiser
30/6/2024
UK-China Remanufacturing Forum
Chair
30/5/2024
UCH assures of collaboration on medical equipment remanufacture project
Recipient
16/5/2024
Remanufacturing Master Class Seminar for CIRCULÉIRE
Speaker
10/5/2024
Addressing job creation and skills gap via remanufacturing
Contributor
30/4/2024
Medical equipment remanufacturing
Participant
26/4/2024

More professional activities

Projects

ReSTOR: Designing recyclable flow batteries for locally managed energy storage in developing countries
Brightman, Edward (Principal Investigator) Eales, Aran (Academic) Galloway, Stuart (Co-investigator) Ijomah, Winifred (Co-investigator)
22-Apr-2024 - 21-Jan-2025
ReMake Glasgow Innovation Accelerator
Fitzpatrick, Stephen (Principal Investigator) Ijomah, Winifred (Research Co-investigator) Reimer, Andreas (Research Co-investigator)
The ReMake Glasgow project is developing a first-of-its-kind national ReMake hub within the NMIS Digital Factory. The hub will provide the skills and technologies needed to support ambitious manufacturers of all sizes to adopt circularity and extend the life of products and parts.

The aim is to achieve a 99% reduction in CO2 compared to manufacturing from new through processes such as remanufacturing, refurbishing and repairs.

With under 2% of products manufactured in the UK currently designed and reused in this way, the ReMake hub is set to advance sustainable manufacturing by supporting companies to move towards a circular economy.

Partners in this project are:
- Boeing UK
- British Airways
- SSE Renewables
- James Howden & Company Ltd
- ATS
- Renewable Parts Ltd
01-Apr-2023 - 31-Mar-2025
Sustainable Manufacturing enabling Net Zero – Opening up the conversation
Ijomah, Winifred (Principal Investigator)
17-Oct-2022 - 30-Nov-2022
Remanufacture: A Strategy to Enable Affordable Quality Healthcare in Developing Countries (International Collaboration Award)
Ijomah, Winifred (Principal Investigator)
Remanufacture: A Strategy to Enable Affordable Quality Healthcare in Developing Countries (International Collaboration Award)
03-Dec-2018 - 02-Dec-2024
Large scale demonstration of new circular economy value-chains based on the reuse of end-of-life: FiberEUse (H2020-IND-CE-2016-17)
Ijomah, Winifred (Principal Investigator) Ren, Jinchang (Co-investigator) Rentizelas, Athanasios (Co-investigator) Windmill, James (Co-investigator) Xirouchakis, Paul (Co-investigator)
Large scale demonstration of the techno-economical feasibility of circular economy business cases based on the reuse of end-of-life fiber reinforced composites in new value chains
01-Jun-2017 - 31-May-2021
Investigation of a Smart and Low-Cost Autonomous System for Early Detection and Monitoring of Mild Cognitive Impairment in the Elderly
Yang, Erfu (Principal Investigator) Li, David (Co-investigator) Ijomah, Winifred (Co-investigator) Fei, Zixiang (Post Grad Student)
As the number of the elderly people increase, there is an urgent need for the development of advanced assistative technology to ensure their mobility and independent living by early detection and monitoring of the MCI in the low-income community. The main objectives of this project are described as follows:
Scientific:
(1) To develop novel algorithms for facial recognition and body movement analyses to early detect and monitor the MCI condition in the elderly.
(2) To propose a smart tool that can compute the attentional focus of the elderly and determine communication counterparts.
(3) To investigate a decision making tool to manage and integrate all the sensory resources of the mobile devices for efficiently executing multiple tasks.
Long-term:
(1) To improve the performance and scalability of the developed system for the purpose of collective care in the low-income community.
(2) To widen the scope of the applicability of the developed system.
(3) To lay the foundation for improving the interaction between the elderly and other assistive healthcare device/systems in different environments and chronic conditions.
(4) To associate healthcare applications with smart cities, robotics and autonomous systems, signal processing, computer vision and machine learning communities.
01-Oct-2016 - 30-Sep-2019

More projects

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Contact

Professor Winifred Ijomah
Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management

Email: w.l.ijomah@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 548 4346