Data spaces for flexible production lines & supply chains
For resilient manufacturing
Manufacturing industries continually face the challenge of delivering high-quality products at high production rates while minimizing non-value-adding activities. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is causing manufacturers to rethink their global supply chains and the flexibility of their production sites to achieve a resilient manufacturing.
The European research project Flex4Res (Data spaces for FLEXible production lines and supply chains FOR RESilient manufacturing) aims to improve the resilience of supply chains. Therefore, it provides an open platform for secure and sovereign data exchange along the supply chain to support production networks’ reconfiguration for resilient manufacturing value chains. Additional toolboxes for resilience assessment and reconfiguration planning enable stakeholders across the supply chain to manage different types of disruptions by quickly and efficiently reconfiguring supply chains and production lines.
Flex4Res Concept
Key Dates
Use Cases
The integrated solution will be tested and validated in four industrial pilot cases on the reconfiguration of different hierarchical layers, from the value-chain to machines and devices.
Hans Berg GmbH & Co. KG
Challenge: Adjustment measures are necessary when a tool or material has changed, but its duration and success depend on the experience of the employee executing it.
Goal: Reducing the time required to reconfigure the tools, the amount of produced defective components, and the need for the experience required to perform the adjustment tasks.
Sidenor Group
Challenge: Disruptions require reallocating the production, which takes place manually. Decisions taken at network level aren’t connected to the reconfiguration needed at the factory level.
Goal: Reducing the time required for reconfiguration of the production plans for the production network by supporting the user throughout the reconfiguration planning.
GOIMEK
Challenge: The process steps within the production of one part are performed in several working centres. They need to be fixed according to the daily production needs.
Goal: Increasing the efficiency and competitiveness as well as the predictability of production by developing a cross-site production planner, which can be constantly reconfigured.
voestalpine High Performance Metals Digital Solutions GmbH
Challenge: The products vary in size and shape and can only be machined on machinery providing the necessary capabilities, which also vary on other factors such as tools.
Goal: Highly flexible production planning and scheduling, also depending on the current machine state and manufacturing utilities with the opportunity to reconfigure the processes during production.
Latest Updates
Industry-oriented research for resilient supply chains
The Horizon Europe research project Flex4Res aims to strengthen the European manufacturing industry by boosting supply chain resilience. Its four use cases are challenges that can be translated to the majority of production companies.
Project meeting in Elgoibar, Spain
IDEKO hosted the second Flex4Res Project General Assembly, which took place in Elgoibar, Spain, on 16 and 17 May 2023. Besides discussions on the latest developments, site visits of Goimek S. Coop and IDEKO were on the agenda.
Boosting supply chain resilience
The new Horizon Europe project Flex4Res supports the European manufacturing industry in the flexible reconfiguration of production processes. 17 partners from six countries have started working on the project.
Consortium
17 partners from 6 EU countries (Austria, Belgium, Greece, Luxemburg, Germany and Spain). The number of different countries in the project ensures a rounder approach to the problems that are met by different European countries.
