Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Productive4.0 (Electronics and ICT as enabler for digital industry and optimized supply chain management covering the entire product lifecycle)

Teaser

Motivation and relevance for the societyProductive4.0 – a technology push: Smarter and more flexible production, a better use of resources, new standards and a changing work environment are just a few aspects associataded with Industry 4.0, also known as Digital Industry...

Summary

Motivation and relevance for the society

Productive4.0 – a technology push: Smarter and more flexible production, a better use of resources, new standards and a changing work environment are just a few aspects associataded with Industry 4.0, also known as Digital Industry. The digital transformation will be a game changer coming with new chances and challenges. Productive4.0 is initiated to strengthen the international leadership of the European industry and to prepare it for the future. In order to link the digital with the real world, new technologies and tailor-made solutions are needed. The project will furnish the companies with fundamental tools and innovations necessary to translate the potentials of the upcoming digital revolution, into business success. This way they will also be able to prepare for the shift from physical to more qualified and flexible jobs and meet the demands of the demographic change.

Digital transformation: In general, nanoelectronics, ICT-based automation systems and service platforms will play a pivotal role. They enable connectivity, monitoring, analysing, simulating, optimising and controlling production processes. Thus, a virtual copy of the physical world is created, and Cyber Physical Systems facilitate decentralised structures. Over the Internet of Things they interact witch each other and humans in real time. All participants of the value chain will be able to utilise the newly created services. At the same time, manufacturers have to deal with the fact that the sheer production is not enough. Product lifecycle management will involve activities in advance and for the after-sales service. As to new products, development, design and a seamless integration must be taken care of. Later on, they have to be continuously maintained, updated and evolved. The range will span from the idea to recycling.

The key challenges are: Self-configurable supply chain processes and automated order-/contract handling are required; also innovative features and fail operational concepts including sensors and actuators - all the way from the IoT-component level to complete autonomous systems like robots or intelligent cars. Technologies should be able to integrate and deal with legacy systems. Industries have to deal with different cycle times at final product level as well as module and component level. Technology providers must consider standardisation issues regarding exchange processes, protocols and data. The security of infrastructures, protected communication networks and all data is critical as well as new or adapted business models. All these aspects are covered by the horizontal and the vertical integration.

New opportunities: Soon we will see new or modified business models due to changing roles and relationships between the value chain partners. New technologies have to be exploited that must ensure safety, security, reliability and operate under strict realtime constraints in a mixed-criticality setup. Electronics and ICT across the entire value chain will be the key to enhanced production efficiency. On a larger scale, they will stimulate competitiveness and open new opportunities especially for small and mid-size enterprises or start ups offering new and qualified jobs.

Overall objective

Based on the above motivation, the main objective of the Productive4.0 project proposal is to achieve significant improvement in digitalising the European industry by means of electronics and ICT. Ultimately, the project aims at suitability for everyday application across all industrial sectors. It addresses various industrial domains with the same approach, i.e. that of digitalisation. In order to achieve this ambitious objective, the main idea behind Productive4.0 is depicted in Figure 1. What makes the project unique is the holistic system approach: Productive4.0 will take a major step towards a hands-on approach of digitalising the European industry with the focus on the three pillars: Digital Produc

Work performed

\"One of the main objective within this work package during the first project year was the successful start and ramp-up phase of the project, enabled by suitable structures and defined processes. Given the large consortium and the manifold of technical objectives and views, in particular during the first year an excessive amount of communication was needed. This includes organization and moderation of kickoff meeting, consortium conference, technical workshops, phone conferences etc . We conclude that the high amount of communication effort was really valuable – all active work packages are currently up and except some minor deviations that were reported in the individual work packages fully in line with the plan. All deliverables due in the reporting period are available. Right at project start the data exchange server as well as a first version of the project webpage were available and online. Since project start we spent many effort to generate a new highly attractive and informative webpage. This went online on Nov. 14. The entire consortium contributes to frequently generate news, events, videos and other dissemination material for the blog of the website (https://productive40.eu/news/). In this context we would like to emphasize that a LinkedIn group as well as a YouTube channel for the project were set up. Finally, the Productive4.0 is promoted by posts in Twitter. As described in the Technical Annex, the Productive4.0 consortium is keen to push dissemination both to the scientific community and to the general interested public. This is why in addition to the previously mentioned regular news, we emphasize the presence of Productive4.0 in publications (see Participant Portal), at conferences and in press releases, flyers etc. Productive4.0 organised the Lighthouse session Industry4.E on March 7 at the project conference in Athens. As a particular highlight, Productive4.0 was nominated for the Diesel Medal 2017, the oldest German innovation award, in category \"\"best promotion of innovation\"\".\"

Final results

Productive4.0 will lead to advances beyond the state of the art related to Digital production, Supply Chain Management and Product Lifecycle Management. By means of:
i. Reference platform framework enabling Industry 4.0 automation
ii. Robust and re-active production Big-Data analytics and optimization
iii. Hybrid Control Solutions for CPS-enabled manufacturing
iv. Smart IoT devices providing production decision support
v. Supply chain and product lifecycle management and production automation
vi. Carefully structured approach to standardization
vii. Unique holistic exploitation framework: the Productive4.0 multi-sided platform

Website & more info

More info: http://productive40.eu/.