MetaFacturing focuses on a digitized toolchain for metal part production which will lead to a more resilient production process with respect to the raw materials used (e.g., recycled materials), reduces operator effort and cost, and reduces scrap due to out-of-specification parts. The vision is to create a widely-applicable Digital Twin based process setup and control framework, fulfilling the requirements of industrial scale parts manufacturers (with a specific focus on metal parts) whose central hurdle is the effective use of available part and process data to improve the time-to-market and product quality. This framework will strongly leverage on a range of state-of-the-art technologies in the field of model-based data fusion, efficient process simulation, and data standardisation, and continuous Life Cycle Assessment in order to efficiently develop solutions which are tailored for deployment in industry. MetaFacturing project brings together 6 market leaders (FRONIUS, NEMAK, FILL, VITRONIC, BENTELER and LTH) which will closely cooperate in order to reach a new level of leadership in sustainable manufacturing while maintaining their respective market dominance. The envisaged approach will exploit all available data in the process, starting from material data, in-process measurements, end-of-line quality control and sampling-based product validation. The Digital Twin based approach will enable the holistic consideration of this data in order to provide automatic feedback for the process control, as well as providing novel (meta-)data on the materials used which will be valuable to train the engineers working with these materials.

EFFRA recommendations on Factories 4.0 and Beyond (Sept 2016) clearly stated the need for development of large scale experimentation and demonstration of data-driven “connected smart” Factories 4.0, to retain European manufacturing competitiveness. BOOST 4.0 will address this need, by demonstrating in a measurable and replicable way, an open standardised and transformative shared data-driven Factory 4.0 model through 10 lighthouse factories. BOOST 4.0 will also demonstrate how European industry can build unique strategies and competitive advantages through big data across all phases of product and process lifecycle (engineering, planning, operation, production and after-market services) building upon the connected smart Factory 4.0 model to meet the Industry 4.0 challenges (lot size one distributed manufacturing, operation of zero defect processes & products, zero break down sustainable operations, agile customer-driven manufacturing value network management and human centred manufacturing). Our chief objectives include: (1) Establish 10 big data lighthouse smart connected factories (VW, FILL, AutoEuropa, +GF+, FIAT, Phillips, Volvo, GESTAMP, Benteler, Whirlpool). (2) Provide the RAMI 4.0 and IDS based BOOST 4.0 open EU framework and governance model, for both services and data assets. (3) Put together methodologies, assets, models and communities in order to maximise visibility, mobilization, replication potential, and impact (business, financial, standardization) of BOOST 4.0 The investment leveraging factor of BOOST 4.0 will be well above the 4:1 ratio, up to 10:1. In terms of exploitation, in 5-years horizon after the project end, just only the participating lighthouse factories will make a direct follow-on investment above 33Meuro (ROI 10,61), while the commercialisation of the BOOST 4.0 products in the market is expected to generate some 96Meuro cumulative profits (ROI 4,73) for the rest of the partners.

Covid-19 has shown that unpredictable events can disrupt supply chains, demand, and induce work restrictions, which can be detrimental to the manufacturing sector, significantly affecting growth. Especially, when medium or high-volume manufacturing is considered, resilience can only be achieved through rapid reconfigurability and digitalization. Rapid reconfigurability must be addressed in all production levels, ranging from the factory to the machinery and to each individual process step, as well as the interaction with the supply chain. The objective of R3GROUP is to develop and demonstrate resilience strategies for reconfiguration. The project will carry out industrial demonstrators in diverse manufacturing sectors (automotive, fabricated metal products, rubber and plastics, wearing apparel, home appliances) facing various reconfiguration issues (scale up or down, introduction of new suppliers, accommodation of multiple product variants, resilience to unforeseen events), engaging end-users operating with different business models (B2B, B2C) and on different positions in the value chain (OEM, Tier 1). R3GROUP will follow the 6 reconfigurability principles to develop technologies in 5 pillars towards resilience through reconfigurability: i) release an AAS-enabled platform for horizontal and vertical integrability for reconfigurability; ii) develop production tools and technologies, through the reconfigurable machine tool concept; iii) deploy a digital toolkit supporting rapid evaluation of reconfiguration impacts, using multi-level digital twins; iv) integrate innovative tools to capture the trigger for reconfiguration that provide awareness on the status of the rest of the value chain (supply chain, market); v) multi-level monitoring, control, and quality assessment to mitigate the reconfiguration impact. Finally, R3GROUP will develop human-centred solutions and put special focus on reskilling to support the adoption of novel technologies.

SPRINTER will provide a set of low-cost, energy-efficient, and ultra-dynamic optical transceivers and an optical switching solution to cope with the diverse needs of the industrial networks and expedite their truly digital transformation. SPRINTER will combine the best-of-breed optical components and methods from various powerful but complementary photonic integration platforms to develop low-cost and energy-efficient 200 Gb/s optical transceivers, and ultra-fast wavelength-tunable 10 Gb/s optical transceivers. Leveraging well-proven integration techniques that allow for the fabrication of complex 3D photonic integrated circuits, the project will provide a disruptive low-loss and polarization-insensitive reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer, optimized for operation within space-division multiplexing networks. Considering the ultra-dynamic nature of the industrial networks due to the deployment of either temporarily fixed or moving remote nodes, SPRINTER will provide a set of groundbreaking photonics-enabled transceivers supporting wireless connectivity by means of a free-space optical or a mmWave channel. The transceivers will be able to operate reliably in indoor environments, as well as, outdoor environments thanks to the complementary characteristics of the two channels. The project will also develop a unified network platform, providing the required methods and tools to support time-deterministic operation, and enable real-time communication with guaranteed service quality. In order to showcase SPRINTER's full potential, the developed technology will be evaluated within application scenarios that will be deployed in a relevant industrial environment incorporating a fully operational closed-loop control system.

Sport Infinity aims to identify and develop innovative partly waste-based long-fibre reinforced composites enabling the automatic production of easily customisable plastic sports goods. The project will focus on the production of balls and shoes and will adopt a design-driven approach exploiting the automation potential of rotation moulding processes, which offer significant design freedom. The innovation potential of the moulding processes to be employed originates from their capacity of bonding together a multitude of different materials, while effecting external product shaping without using glue and/or other adhesives. The starting point is the development of composite materials superimposed in the form of layers in variable ways according to the targeted (custom) shape and the required properties. The insertion of decorative elements in the mould will enable design custom designs, along with 3D printing. An end-to-end collaborative design innovation will be adopted. The Sport Infinity consortium gathers expertise across the value chain from design to material development, production, marketing and distribution and across multiple disciplines industrial design, material science, recycling and industrial processes. The new flexible automatic production, can set a paradigm of competitive production Made in Europe favouring ranging from modular factories to in-store production cells.