The actual global industry scene is characterized by unexpected disruptions in the supply chain, as well as abrupt changes in the market demand and environmental strains. This scenario required robust, smart, and rapid systems which are indeed greater than ever. The Intelligent Manufacturing Custodian (IMC), which is the core of the NARRATE’s technological innovation, an AI driven center monitors the supply chain enabling the anticipation of disruptions, also coordinating production and logistics activities, and recommending ad-hoc actions to react to these adverse situations and become more resilient. The three pilots, representing diverse industrial sectors – Manufacturing as a Service in furniture domain, Distributed 3D Printing as a Service, and Semiconductor Industry – enable the validation and demonstration of the IMC concept in real industrial environments. In this context, advances have been made in the industrial pilots to start preparing the adoption of the solutions developed in NARRATE.
INSA Lyon visited the MEDWOOD facilities during summer to get detailed information about the processes carried out by the company. To this end, Armand presented the needs for the tool that INSA is implementing focused on production planning and process routing, to define the information required to start the first assessment activities. MEDWOOD also organized a visit to the factory of MEDWOOD presenting the different areas, processes and workstations.
The day after, Brunel University of London also visited MEDWOOD to present a demo of the Disruption Resilience tool and define the required information for its setup in the company premises. The factory was also revisited to present the different production stations and involved processes. The tool proposed by Brunel provides solutions for both normal and disruptive situations, considering resources (suppliers, customers, workers, facilities) and inventory (materials, components). To this end, tracking and monitoring aspects in the MEDWOOD pilot need to be evaluated.
Furthermore, another meeting with INSA was conducted to continue the discussion on the information required from MEDWOOD regarding the tool focused on Production Planning and Process Routing. The need to focus on manufacturing orders and the relevance of the consumed, remaining and maximum capacities were particularly emphasized.
Although one tool is more focused on production management and the other on supply and inventory management, both will be connected to the Intelligent Manufacturing Custodian (IMC) which is indeed considered the ‘brain’ of the overall system being implemented in NARRATE.
Next steps will cover the data availability with particular emphasis on production planning, products, and production times, considering historical information.
In the meanwhile, the advances in the AIDIMME pilot have focused on the analysis of the available additive manufacturing resources and the availability of data from the 3D printing machines. The services offered by one machine focused on the printing of metal pieces have been analyzed to prepare the publication of machine information, as well as the measurements of the argon gas used to feed the overall additive manufacturing installation.
To this end, internal meetings in AIDIMME have been conducted, and a special remote meeting with Bluebridge was arranged to define the format of the retrieved data and start the evaluation of transmission protocols to put this data available for the solutions being implemented in the project.
Regarding the BUDATEC pilot, meetings between the company and Fraunhofer IPK have been arranged to discuss the implementation of the solutions into operative production, as well as the data availability and data connection for testing the solutions. The definition and tracking of KPIs have been also discussed.
Moreover, several meetings have been arranged with Brunel regarding the warehouse management and storage periods. Also, the data exchange and the alignment of project expectations have been discussed with Bluebridge.
By the moment, implementations related to real-time energy consumption and component usage in the machines are being conducted, to address the systematic and individual maintenance of the machines based on user historical data. This is also related to reduced stock, and the awareness and more efficient usage of IT systems.
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