Invigorate agility and innovation in manufacturing SMEs.
Digital Twins bringing agility and innovation to manufacturing SMEs, by empowering a network of DIHs with an integrated digital platform that enables Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS) - or to put it in another way: "How to invigorate agility and innovation in manufacturing SMEs."
What is Manufacturing as a Service? MaaS is a way for companies to remain committed to their core mission while outsourcing the actual manufacturing process without compromising quality or costs. Focus on product innovation instead of taking care of machines and factories.
Today at 10 AM, DIGITbrain launched their first Open Call for application experiments! Hand in your experiment application by end of June!
DIGITbrain Experiment 2 - Core business: Injection and decoration of small to medium-sized plastic parts
Process set-up and optimization is a key phase and adjustment is performed based on experience and through trial and error loops. "When the mould is already built and the piece goes into production, it is no longer feasible to perform such simulations to make decisions about the adjustments to be made on the line in the event of any variation produced, due to the excessive time it would take to make them." This is a significant loss of opportunity since simulation tools reproducing the physics of processes, but it is impossible to have results immediately, which is the necessary requirement in decision-making to control the process in the injection line.
In DIGITbrain: ITAINNOVA will extend an existing Injection app. Aiming for a configurable service for reducing time-to-production in the set-up phase and for reducing cycle times during production. The experiment will result in a tool that supports the selection of proper process parameters to minimize the injection cycle time whilst keeping quality indicators of the selected part within tolerances.
DIGITbrain Experiment 5 - Core Business: Additive manufacturing process for medal devices
Laser-Based Powder Bes Fusion (LB-PBF) facilitates mass customisation of parts due to the design freedom and the fact that specific tooling is not needed to adjust designs. DIGITbrain will apply the Digital Twin concept to LB-PBF processing to improve process oversite, facilitate MaaS production models and increase confidence in this production method.
Standardize the collection and processing of data from different machines in different locations
Physical and material variances due to the complex nature of the process are common. Many machines vendors have added process monitoring sensors of different types to identify and correct for variances. The analysis of sensor data in material and part development is established on individual machines. To facilitate MaaS, a procedure needs to be developed to standardize the collection and processing of data from different machines in different locations, and a framework put in place to share and compare the data to aid in process validation and quality control.
DiGITbrain Experiment 6 - Core Business: Agricultural technology robots
In the past, every Robot of AgroIntelli was produced separately. Every Robot will mainly be used for a specific type of operation (A), driving in a specific country and in specific soil conditions (X), whereas some will use tools (B) and (C) driving in various locations (Y). The robot performance and the needs for service are highly impacted by its final place of operation.
The experiment is aiming for batch production of robots without losing flexibility. The Digital Brain needs to be utilized in order to keep track of the status of different vehicles. It will also open up the challenge for different real-time maintenances for the different robots and training sessions for employees adapted to the specific service needs of a robot.
You think you're not ready to apply?
Before we mentioned an empowering network of DIHs, right? DIHs are pretty cool ecosystems to connect with - for example in the EU-funded Project DIGITbrain, DIHs will provide assistance from proposal writing to the implementation of the experiment.
Way too much planned for the upcoming months? Don't worry! There will be a second Open Call in the second quarter of 2022. Register yourself to the DIGITbrain newsletter and never miss any news on the Innovation Action!