The MAESTRI project aims to advance the sustainability of European manufacturing and process industries. This is done by providing a management system in the form of a flexible and scalable platform, and to guide and simplify the implementation of an innovative approach, the Total Efficiency Framework. The overall aim of this framework is to encourage a culture of improvement within process industries by assisting the decision-making process, supporting the development of improvement strategies and helping define the priorities to improve the company's environmental and economic performance. Its development and validation will be achieved through application in four real industrial settings across a variety of activity sectors. The Total Efficiency Framework will be based on four main pillars to overcome the current barriers and promote sustainable improvements: a) an effective management system targeted at process and continuous improvement; b) efficiency assessment tools to define improvement and optimisation strategies and support decision-making processes; c) integration with a toolkit for Industrial Symbiosis focusing on material and energy exchange; d) a software Platform, based on the Internet of Things (IoT), to simplify the concept implementation and ensure an integrated control of improvement process. Over a period of 4 years, the project will deliver exploitable resultsclustered into technological outputs (including eco-innovative products, processes and services tailored to industrial end-users) and structured solutions (involving technical, economical, legislative and policy solutions synergistically combined).

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.

The MONSOON vision is to provide Process Industries with dependable tools to help achieving improvements in the efficient use and re-use of raw resources and energy. MONSOON aims at establishing a data-driven methodology supporting the exploitation of optimization potentials by applying multi-scale model based predictive controls in production processes. MONSOON features harmonized site-wide dynamic models and builds upon the concept of the cross-sectorial data lab, a collaborative environment where high amounts of data from multiple sites are collected and processed in a scalable way. The data lab enables multidisciplinary collaboration of experts allowing teams to jointly model, develop and evaluate distributed controls in rapid and cost-effective way. Hybrid simulation and seamless integration techniques are adopted for rapid prototyping and deployment in real conditions. MONSOON will be developed and evaluated in two sites from the aluminium and plastics domains. The aluminium scenario will be focused on predictive monitoring of potlines, targeting early detection of anomalies and identification of potential optimization gains. Aluminium cases will be implemented in the plant with the highest primary aluminium production in the EU-28, namely the AP Dunkerque smelter, France. The plastics scenario will focus on fusing data from data-intensive in-mould sensors with information from higher SCADA levels, enabling early and precise identification of potential issues. This use case will be implemented in the GLN plant in Maceira-Leiria. MONSOON addresses the SPIRE vision, providing advantages for the European industry competitiveness and sustainability through the realization of an overarching monitoring and control infrastructure. MONSOON aims at creating synergies within and between the process industry sectors, boosting European industry in the worldwide race for competitiveness and sustainability.

ZDZW excels in offering a catalogue of IoT based non-destructive inspection technologies, providing an accurate inline evaluation of key product parameters that have an effect in quality requirements within different technical areas, such as: Part Integrity, Visual Requirements and Thermal Process efficiency. The ZDZW Inspection Solutions follow the concept of Inspection as a service, guaranteeing its cost effectiveness and improved return of investment, offering different types of subscription and pay-per-use models depending on the offered functionalities. To pursue the main goal of reducing defects and the waste generated in manufacturing processes, ZDZW addresses defects and waste reduction in three key areas that cover the entire manufacturing process and product lifecycle: (i) Monitoring and control improvement for process quality assurance, where first-time-right manufacturing rate can be increased, including improved durability properties and reduced waste generation; (ii) digitally enhanced Rework & Repair procedures for necessary part recovery and scrap reduction; and (iii) Continuous Sustainability evaluation to ensure the efficient use of materials and components across the full production line. ZDZW is strongly supported by collaboration with relevant EU initiatives such as ZDMP and i4Q, providing components and services that enhance key ICT aspects such as interoperability, interlinking, security, data reliability and digital platforms. ZDZW will demonstrate its ZD and ZW approach in 6 Pilots involving production processes with an important waste reduction potential, such as injection moulding, thermoforming, welding and coating, induction hardening, lithography and packaging, involving key industrial sectors as automotive, home appliances, renewable energy, e-health, and food and beverages.