Professor Konstantinos Salonitis

Areas of expertise

• Manufacturing Systems
• Sustainable Manufacturing

Background

Professor Konstantinos (Kostas) Salonitis (Dip Eng, MSc, PhD, MBA, MEd, PGCAP, CEng FIMechE, FHEA) graduated from University of Patras with a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering in 2001 and was awarded a PhD in Manufacturing Processes in 2006. He has since completed a Master in Business Administration and a Master in Education (Adult learning). He has worked as a Research Engineer at the University of Patras in a number of research projects funded by the CEU. He has participated in more than 10 European Commission funded projects as Project Manager or Technical Site Manager.

He joined Cranfield University in February 2012 as a Lecturer in Manufacturing Systems, progressing to Senior Lecturer in October 2015 and Reader in October 2017. He was appointed a Professor of Manufacturing Systems in October 2019. Kostas has published more than 250 research papers in major international journals and internationally referred conferences and authored two books. He has supervised more than 20 PhD students to completion.

At Cranfield University he has been the co-investigator in two EPSRC projects (EP/P012272/1 & EP/M013863/1), 1 Horizon 2020 project (“Score board of competitiveness of European transport manufacturing industries” project id: 724112), the KTP academic supervisor for two KTP projects. He was the co-investigator in one Newton Fund project for Industry Academia Partnership Programme with Universidad Industrial de Santander, Colombia. He has completed more than 30 industrially funded projects. In the last 10 years he has secured funding in excess of £8.0m. Current research projects are listed in the "Current activities".

Kostas managed the Manufacturing Systems programme for more than 7 years and developed new successful courses. He negotiated and agreed the first ever Sino-UK programme in Cranfield University in Aerospace Manufacturing and led the development of the Engineering Competence Apprenticeship programme. These programmes have secured more than £4.0m revenue for the University.  

Kostas is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the IMechE and a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece.  He is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  He is the vice-chair of Manufacturing Industries Division (https://www.imeche.org/industry-sectors/manufacturing/about-the-manufacturing-industries-division) at IMechE and will become the Chair from July 2022. He is a member of the Consortium of UK University Manufacturing and Engineering (COMEH) as part of the Engineering Professors’ Council. 

He is the chair of the Regional Experts Group for China at Cranfield University.  He is in the steering committee of the UK-Jiangsu World Class University Consortium (https://ukjs2020.com/). He is a visiting professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and at Jiangsu University.

Research opportunities

• Simulation and modelling of manufacturing systems and processes
• Sustainability and resource efficiency of manufacturing systems and processes 
• Lean and green thinking and implementation

Current activities

Professor Salonitis current research interests include:

• Simulation and modelling of manufacturing processes and systems
• Energy efficiency of manufacturing processes and systems 
• Environmental impact assessment of manufacturing processes
• Lean manufacturing and management.

His current research focus is on the sustainability of manufacturing systems and processes, the design and optimization of manufacturing systems, and the use of lean and green approaches for managing manufacturing. He is currently Cranfield University PrincipaI Investigator (PI) on the MASTER ATI project (total budget of £15.9M), the PI in the STEAM IETF project (total budget of £365K), a co-investigator (co-I) and the deputy director of the TransFIRE Hub (https://transfire-hub.org - total budget of £4.7M) and a co-I in the Clean Sky 2 UTOPEA project.

He is the head of Sustainable Manufacturing Systems Centre (https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/centres/sustainable-manufacturing-systems-centre) and currently supervises 8 PhD students. He has successfully completed the supervision of over 120 PhD and MSc students and has published over 250 research papers in refereed academic journals and conference proceedings. He is the associate editor for Journal of Manufacturing Systems (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-manufacturing-systems) and the Journal of Cleaner Production (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-cleaner-production).

Clients

Publications

• Articles in journals
• Conference papers
• Books