White paper is prepared by the Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing Network – AIM-NET, both IDEKO and MONDRAGON Corporation are part of this Community. This paper is entitled “Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing”. It’s main objective is to report the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in European manufacturing, and its potential to enhance competitiveness and technological leadership in the future.

The paper is based on research conducted by the Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing NETwork (AIM-NET), which represents the viewpoint of the manufacturing community on the achievements and challenges of AI solutions. The document covers topics such as AI in manufacturing processes, robots, machines, and operations support in manufacturing, and AI in manufacturing systems. It also includes discussions on cross-cutting aspects such as regulation, education, systems engineering, and data augmentation. The paper also presents the maturity achieved TRL levels of existing AI-based applications in manufacturing, typical KPIs used to assess performance, and barriers and limitations to wide adoption. It also provides a roadmap for future work on AI, with efforts needed in short-term and long-term time horizons. Overall, the paper provides a comprehensive overview of the current status and future vision of AI in manufacturing for policy makers, practitioners, and researchers.

EARASHI is a European network made of existing local ecosystems to reach a large number of third parties and maximize the number of new innovative AI & Robotics at work solutions. The workplan is clearly defined so that each partner has a precise role and does not work in parallel with the others. EARASHI has all the major assets to succeed in helping third parties and sustain the competitiveness and demand of European manufacturing.

This combination of experiences, competencies, and technologies from leading European institutes is sufficient to provide the critical mass necessary to bring the project to a successful completion.

Besides competencies in coaching, business model creation, the continuation of projects after funding, etc., the EARASHI consortium involves leading industrial actors and research institutes in AI, data and robotics, world-recognized SSH expertise, business accelerator, and European DIHs. EARASHI partners have great experience in setting up and managing open calls, with agile processes tailored to start-ups and SMEs’ needs and timelines.

In line with the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan, EARASHI aims to contribute to Europe’s needs to be able to autonomously source and provide crucial services and technologies that are safe and secure for industry and people. Thus, it will help shape secure, trusted, and competitive technologies and as well as enable eco-responsible production and consumption for the production machines/tools field sector.

EARASHI will also promote an open strategic autonomy by leading the development of key digital, enabling, and emerging technologies, sectors, and value chains, and making Europe the first digitally enabled circular, climate-neutral, and sustainable economy.

By investing early in and sustaining competitive emerging enabling technologies, EARASHI will contribute to accelerating an eco-responsible digital transition by 2030.

Network:

The reduction of manufacturing waste is a key part of Europe’s planned transition towards climate neutrality. Composite materials represent an excellent target for reducing waste as they play an important role in several of the EU’s strategic manufacturing sectors, including energy, aerospace, naval and automotives. Liquid resin infusion (LRI) is one of the most widely used composite manufacturing processes, accounting for about 33% of composite parts produced in Europe. It is used especially in the production of large parts such as wind turbine blades, airplane parts and ship decks. Despite the high value of the parts produced using this process, both the material processing and quality control are largely done manually at the end of the manufacturing process, after which the parts are repaired or, if defects are too severe, discarded.To overcome the lack of automated in-line control and to guarantee that defects that arise during the process are not propagated to the final product, LRI manufacturing processes use far more raw materials than are needed for the final product, resulting in an excessive amount of waste.In this context, controlling and reducing the generation of defects by adopting “first-time-right” manufacturing strategies based on novel in-line inspection and monitoring and advanced control strategies – known as a zero-defect manufacturing approach – is of high interest in LRI-based manufacturing processes, as it would allow the amount of material used to be optimised, reduce the reworking time, and reduce the number of fully rejected parts. It is estimated that a reduction of waste of more than 30 % can be achieved via such an approach. Instructions will be linked to a real-time decision support system which will allow workers to take instant and precise corrective actions, paving the way towards “right-first-time” manufacturing. The smart knowledge will be fed from interoperable and sovereign data sharing between sites and factories. In this way, the composite sector will take advantage of the latest technological innovations to digitalise manufacturing processes towards a more sustainable and competitive composite industry.

Working toward this end, during the first six months of the project special emphasis was put on definition of project requirements to achieve first project milestone : project specifications defined. This includes use case specifications, monitoring and inspection system specifications, KPI´s definition, Global Architecture and Data Spaces definition and Human specifications in terms of required skills/training and needs by operators. Not only that, Quality Management Plan and Data Management Plan were also defined within this period. Finally, the Plan for Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation (PCDE) was also described including the creation of the project website ▶️ https://flashcomp.eu.com.

Protocols and Strategies for extending the useful life of major capital investments and Large Industrial Equipment.

The aim of LEVEL-UP is to offer a scalable platform covering the overall lifecycle, ranging from the digital twins setup, modernisation actions to diagnose and predict the operation of physical assets, to the refurbishment and remanufacturing activities towards end of life.

On March 28th and 29th, the General Meeting of month 42 of the LEVEL-UP project took place in Zreče, Slovenia. The meeting, held both physically and virtually, provided a chance for the project’s partners to discuss the progress made in the past 6 months and next actions.

The consortium also talked about the upcoming steps for technology demonstration and Pilot Lines, exploitation activities as well as communication and dissemination activities such as the upcoming final conference of the project.

In addition, the partners had the chance to visit the ISOKON Pilot Line and the premises of ISOKON. The premises of -nearby located company- UNIOR were also visited as a separate activity.

The agenda was rounded off by a joint dinner organized by the hosting project partner ISOKON.

Do you want to know more about this project? ▶️ http://www.levelup-project.eu/project