17 partners from six countries, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Luxemburg and Spain, have joined forces in the EU project Flex4Res. They have started working on developing an open platform for secure and sovereign cross-company data exchange. Accompanied by two toolboxes, one for resilience assessment and one for reconfiguration planning, this will enable manufacturers to reconfigure supply chains and production lines fast and efficiently. The open framework serves as the foundation of the concept: Based on the latest Gaia-X framework, IDS Reference Architecture Model (IDS-RAM) and Asset Administration Shell (AAS) technology, the project team will implement an industrial data space for sharing Digital Twin models of production facilities that are stored in AAS middleware. Knowledge-based and easy-to-integrate smart tools from the toolboxes will complete the concept and support users with recommendations for corrective actions so that they can make smarter decisions regarding their systems from a resilience perspective. |
“With Flex4Res we have the opportunity to connect stakeholders across the entire supply chain and enable them to manage different types of disturbances through a trusted and secure way of data sharing – without interoperability barriers,” says Kosmas Alexopoulos, Senior Research Engineer at Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation (LMS). “At the same time, we ensure the transfer of expertise in highly complex production processes by building a knowledge-based system in which sensor information can be combined with the knowledge of machine experts.” Flex4Res is funded with around eight million euros as part of the Horizon Europe program. It is one of currently five projects within the growing ecosystem around the manufacturing-centred Gaia-X lighthouse project EuProGigant. Tackling challenges of the industry With its four use cases, the Flex4Res project team addresses different types of manufacturing systems and focuses on various hierarchical layers. Different disciplines will be brought together in each use case to develop solutions for flexible supply chains. These tasks will include: - a Flex4Res software platform for AAS connection through IDS towards reconfigurable manufacturing value chains.
- a resilience toolbox for assessing threats and opportunities and support of decision making for the application of reconfiguration strategies.
- publications of scientific achievements in different fields of research.
- training and skills development for adopting best practices in reconfiguration.
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