Data spaces for flexible production lines
How to make manufacturing resilient
Manufacturing industries continuously face the challenge of delivering high-quality products under 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 get a resilient manufacturing.
The European research project Flex4Res 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 reconfiguring supply chains and production lines quickly and efficiently.
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 value-chain to machine and device.
Hans Berg GmbH & Co. KG
At Hans Berg adjustment is currently carried out manually and its duration and success depend on the individual experience of the employee carrying it out. As the process is time-consumung and scrap is created until the first defect-free component is produced, this needs to be optimised.
Flex4Res will develop an intelligent tool with integrated sensors and actuators. In addition, a corresponding control algorithm will be implemented to automatically adjust the tools by inserted actuators.
Sidenor Group
External and internal disruptions require reconfiguration of the production plans of the production network at Sidenor. Currently, reconfiguration of the production plan at the network level takes place manually and is based on expert knowledge and spreadsheet calculations.
Flex4Res will develop a optimisation method to propose optimised plans that reallocate the production. Moreover, it will be possible to exchange data among the production sites to further optimise this method.
GOIMEK
At GOIMEK, painting, milling, and grinding operations are performed in several working centres. The process steps and parts are flexible but have to be fixed accordingly to the daily production needs and part/process characteristics.
Flex4Res will tackle the task of planning and supply chain management by assisting humans in making decisions. Therefore, real-time data, anomaly detection models and a channel for secure data exchange will be deveoped.
voestalpine Group
At voestalpine, the products vary in size and shape and can only be machined on machinery providing the necessary capabilities. Currently, no automatic mechanism exists to optimise the workflow through reconfiguration of the manufacturing process.
Flex4Res will develop a flexible process that enables the reconfiguration of the manufacturing process during production. A new shopfloor modelling approach enables the integration of ERP and machine capability and current configuration status data into a model.
Latest Updates
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.
