The Centre for SMART was established at Loughborough University in 2004. The Centre pioneered a holistic approach to sustainability as one of the first centres established to consider the entire life cycle of products and production systems. Since then, the Centre has become globally recognised for its innovative research and its scope of activity has grown rapidly with the Centre currently involved in a number of national and international initiatives.
While the initial projects carried out at SMART identified areas for optimisation and improvement, current and future activities are focused on enabling radical changes to products, production methods, business models and consumption patterns that are needed to meet the pressing global challenges facing the manufacturing industry.