EGG Lighting
EGG Lighting was born in 2013 and now delivers lighting solutions to a broad variety of commercial clients across Scotland and North England. They have gained a reputation for delivering pioneering circular economy projects in their sector.
The 1st Challenge
In September 2020, Innovate UK launched a ‘Manufacturing Made Smarter’ funding call, seeking to drive digital innovation in UK manufacturing supply chains. EGG Lighting worked with The Data Lab’s Funding Team to develop their funding application for a Data-Driven Luminaire Remanufacture Initiative.
The goal for this study was to measure the feasibility of accelerating the lighting supply chain’s transition to a circular economy model – “remanufacture not replace” – by enabling low-cost asset data management and data sharing.
The TORCH team were brought in at this point to host a Data Strategy Workshop and produce a short report in support of the funding application. As part of their submission, EGG included 20 days of work with TORCH to undertake some of the initial stages of the implementation of their data strategy.
The 2nd Challenge
In Dec 2020, it was announced that EGG’s grant application had been successful and in April 2021, TORCH were reintroduced to start the data work stream. This included the creation of a business activity model; identifying the most appropriate data model approach for EGG (e.g. buy, re-use, create from scratch, etc.) and providing data expertise to all the other project work streams.
There was also a potential partner collaboration which EGG wanted to explore, and determining which data flows would be needed to support this would be key in determining its potential value.
EGG wanted to experiment with a new idea: to branch away from operating as a general lighting supplier, and move towards a ‘providing lighting as a service’ model. Whilst changing that model was not completely unique (a handful of global brands have already moved into this space), it is an innovative move for the Scottish market.
Their initial concept worked around a remanufacturing offering – re-working useable parts in order to retrieve carbon footprints and reduce the amounts being sent to landfill. However, this was (and still is) a challenging task; this industry has never been based on dissecting and repurposing the raw materials.
TORCH’s Senior Solutions Architect, Margery McConnell, came on board to help EGG understand what kind of data they would need to collect, store, and track to deliver such a service (whilst also preparing for ongoing innovation in future phases). Another key feature of the model would be to retain the ongoing learnings data that EGG build as they deliver more remanufactured lighting for their customers.
The Solution
A standard manufacturer’s application suite will cover everything EGG needed in their original business model, however, these applications don’t currently accommodate EGG’s new ideas for repurposing parts. It was identified quickly that not only would they need to start storing new data, but they’d also need to make enhancements to their platform’s model.
Margery agreed to concentrate on building a new data model; a new piece of intellectual property specific to EGG, which could be integrated down then line when needed.
Margery –
“I developed this data model for EGG to provide structure around the new information that they may need to capture, store, and move around their organisation.”
The Result – “Your processes are going to change, but your data is always going to be there”
Since the TORCH engagement, EGG’s plans for change have shifted slightly to a model that focuses more on the supply chain and what they can do to make their customer’s journey as easy as possible (in choosing the sustainable option.)
Although their ideas may have developed, the new data model still provides them with everything they need to take their next project steps.
Margery told us,
“If you get the data right, the processes can change … We’ve given EGG a basic data architecture for intellectual property, which is unique to them. This opens up a great opportunity for EGG as (with this) they have the potential to become the provider of this model for other lighting suppliers.”
Brian O’Reilly, EGG CEO summarised their TORCH experience:
“What this project really highlighted for us is that if you don’t know exactly what you want to do, but you really understand the information, a data model helps you imagine what you could do.”
Recognition and Moving Forward
In March 2022, the EGG Lighting team received CeeD’s (Centre for Engineering, Education and Development) Remanufacturing Award. Sponsored by Zero Waste Scotland, EGG’s Innovate UK project (secured with help from TDL’s Funding team) was recognised for its efforts to cut carbon emissions and support Scotland’s circular economy efforts.
This recognition has provided an excellent opportunity for them to bring visibility to their emerging work around the process of remanufacturing in the lighting industry – Read about EGG’s work with Zero Waste Scotland.
Most recently, they were announced as a finalist for the VIBES Award 2022, celebrating businesses that have championed sustainability by identifying ways to tackle the impact on the planet by reducing consumption of its resources.
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