[step-manufacturing] New European projects

[Stroud Ian Anthony]

Dear Everyone,
Please feel free to pass this message on to anyone you think may be interested, as I do not have email addresses for everyone concerned yet.

The point of the message is to start a coordinated discussion on our strategy for getting new FP7, and maybe other projects.  We all recognise the need for having continuing strong presence in manufacturing projects.  What I would like to do is, first, to avoid treading on each other’s toes by competing with each other; and secondly to coordinate research projects for better visibility.

In the next call there seem to be three main NMP areas, which have already been mentioned by Van Khai Nguyen in an earlier message.  These are:

NMP-2009-3.2-2 Adaptive control systems for responsive factories

NMP-2009-3.4-2 Holistic and integrated approach to high performance, reliable and adaptive machine-tool design and production

NMP-2009-4.0-5 Innovative and knowledge-based tooling industry

With maybe

NMP-2009-4.0-4 Reducing the environmental footprint of energy intensive industries

For eco-evaluation and adaptive control and stuff.  We are a bit outside that, but maybe we can submit something anyway.


For the Adaptive control systems call, there is, for me, an interesting idea of how to set up a virtual factory of a main manufacturer as a hub, with various SMEs attached as reconfigurable manufacturing elements.  This could also work at a distance, so that a company could have a virtual factory in another country to avoid transport costs.  I think that this is in line with Bath’s plug-and-play work.

The Holistic and integrated approach is a bit of an embarrassment for me.  This is a natural call for UPLIFE, which Professor Suh initiated.  However, I did not know that Professor Xirouchakis has already started negotiations with Fatronik (Rikardo Bueno) with a similar proposition.  I think that there is room to join this project, but we would not be in control, so I am a bit in the middle.  If interested people in our community can be accommodated in Fatronik’s project then OK, but if we decide to put in our own proposal then I won’t be able to participate as a partner, although I will help in preparation of the project.  What are your thoughts about this?

The Innovative and knowledge based tooling also talks about distributed manufacturing and could maybe also have the virtual factory as an element.  Simulation and verification based on standard machine tool models is another possibility.

The environmental footprint call may also be a forum for distributed manufacturing and process selection.


In addition there are some other interesting topics in the ICT document I got from Stephen Newman.  I haven’t finished going through these yet, but some of the objectives on networking may be interesting in a manufacturing environment – “Internet of things and Enterprise environments”, “Trustworthy ICT”.  There is also Embedded Systems design.  Technology Enhanced learning for manufacturing, possibly embedding learning systems into manufacturing resources, which was a suggestion by ASCAMM in the NEXT project in which we participate.  I also noticed “Challenging current thinking”, which would perhaps be useful for re-engineering of the manufacturing lifecycle, how to redo the CAD-CAPP-CAM-CVNC chain, but also handle the use-phase and end-of-life phases with remanufacturing as an integrated process.  There was also an “International Cooperation” category to look at.  I haven’t finished looking at this because I found the document more opaque than the NMP call so am not sure quite what they want.

I would welcome your comments so that we can move forward to get some projects, or possibly project packages, going in the near future.  Apologies to the people outside Europe if this is not of interest, but I thought it would keep you informed about European activity.

Best regards,

Ian

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Ian Stroud
EPFL, STI-IPR-LICP,
Station 9, ME A1.393,
CH-1015 Lausanne,
Switzerland

Tel : +41 21 693 2949
FAX : +41 21 693 3553
http://licpwww.epfl.ch

Some links:
http://www.nextproject.eu/

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