ABOUT The project
Background
Creating a longer life-cycle for manufacturing systems
Reusing production assets to create a viable pathway towards “closing the loop”
Many current production assets, such as industrial robots, conveyor belts, and other stand-alone assets, do not reach their maximal lifetime and become prematurely obsolescent. Experience from the automotive industry suggests that 60 % to 70 % of production resources are prematurely taken out of operation, scrapped, or, at best, sold for spare parts. This state-of-play constitutes a severe wastage of resources and goes against attempts by the EU to move away from the “take-make-consume-throw away” model and “optimize resource yields by circulating products, components, and materials in use at the highest utility at all times […]”, as stipulated by the EU’s 2016 New Circular Economy Package and the 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan.
Source: European Parliamentary Research Service – Closing the loop – new circular economy package (2016)
The goals
70-80%
reduction of material and energy requirements for new assembly systems
100%
reuse rate of used assembly systems
The main objectives contributing to ALICIA
Framework
The first goal is to build a novel standardized framework for capturing factory-owner and factory staff requirements related to production lines to pave the way for seamless data/business process exchange between various stakeholders in the value chain (suppliers of second-hand assets, machine builders, system integrators, providers of remanufacturing/recycling services).
Digital Tools
The second goal is to develop a set of integrated digital tools (AI-matchmaking engine, Digital Shadow and Twin, and Plug & Produce middleware) to provide factory owners, their engineers, and technicians with a one-stop-shop service for planning, constructing, ramping up, and sustainably running second-hand production lines.
Integration and Demonstration
The final goal is to integrate all ALICIA digital tools developed into a small-scale system and test it in a controlled environment (“small scale CME”) by connecting it to the existing Market 4.0 online marketplace and a second-hand production resource database and running tests on real data.