Zero-defect manufacturing for green transition in Europe

Project Information

ENGINE

Grant agreement ID: 101058179

DOI

10.3030/101058179

Project closed

EC signature date 24 May 2022

Start date 1 June 2022

End date 31 May 2025

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 11 553 468,00

EU contribution

€ 8 939 318,00

Coordinated by

TEKNOLOGIAN TUTKIMUSKESKUS VTT OY
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENGINE (Zero-defect manufacturing for green transition in Europe)

Reporting period: 2022-06-01 to 2023-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The main objective of ENGINE is to develop a first-time-right and zero-defect metal product design and manufacturing system, then demonstrate it on marine engine supply-chain. Our ambition is to increase competitiveness of industry and SMEs, reduce manufacturing defects and waste, create new business cases, and improve employee well-being.

To achieve it ENGINE will:

1. Create and demonstrate a novel metal product design and manufacturing system.
2. Develop computational modelling toolbox for product and process design, non-destructive diagnostic tools for production monitoring, and data solution for seamless integration of the whole supply-chain.
3. Research methodologies for first-time-right and zero-defect manufacturing.
4. Investigate life-cycle analysis and life-cycle cost methods for design and business decisions.
5. Present a strategy for employee skills development.
6. Transform innovations into promising business cases.

Market potential of the ENGINE technology: Assuming the current market shares, we expect an increase in turnover 2 000M EUR/year. When we succeed in the deployment plans of ENGINE, and we can decrease the cost per kilowatt, we can assume to double the current market share, thus leading another increase of 2 000M EUR/year. ENGINE is paramount to ensure the manufacturing quality and technical feasibility of new environmentally friendly fuel engines.

Environmental impact: The ENGINE technology will create a huge impact on global CO2 emissions. We estimate that annually CO2 emissions will be reduced by 170 million tons through green fuel engines with the expected market share. Europeans demand minimal environmental impact of industry with 93% seeing climate change as a serious problem and 51% thinking that business and industry are responsible for tackling it. Environmental impact can be reduced by shrinking manufacturing footprint and increasing the attractiveness of products with low lifetime footprint. The first will be tackled by shifting the design process to first-time-right manufacturing to digital space and employing zero-defect manufacturing systems. The second will be addressed by reducing product time-to-market, manufacturing waste and integrating lifecycle assessments in design and business decisions.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the project's first 18 months the main achievement interfacing all ENGINE deliverables and milestones has been the MVP of the ENGINE demonstrator.

This involves particularly the detailed work associated with the main ENGINE system and its components:
-ENGINE exchange for the data management and platform solution for interacting with end users
-ENGINE toolbox to provide the modeling, simulation and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions of the project
-ENGINE production to provide real time interface to monitoring production and product quality, interfacing to AI analysis and inspection of production online.

Additionally, the work has defined the project demonstrator and design workflow ranging all the way from manufacturing product associated materials in steelmaking to post-operational decisions whether to scrap, refurbish or repair used components and everything in between. This workflow is covered parallel to the physical workflow by modeling, simulation and AI solutions to enable the development and improvement of defect free manufacturing methods and practices. These workflows include life-cycle analysis (LCA) and life-cycle cost (LCC) assessment, in addition to development of sensoring to support defect free production and performing of respective experimental activities and trials to support and drive forwards the demonstrator work.

The project has been worked to implement its technical capabilities across work packages while contributing to the project demonstrator (WP1). This involves all the key elements of the activity, developing the ENGINE system (WPs 1-2), data management and interoperability solutions and layers (WP2), modeling and simulation capabilities (WP3), production monitoring and sensoring (WP4), LCA/LCC associated with the project scope (WP6) as well as carrying out experimental programmes (WP5). ENGINE has been active with respect to publication, networking and collaborative activities (WP8), including work refining and assessing our approach for project KERs. The training and education (WP7) have established and are working with the 1st set of use cases and training materials.

Also, a significant milestone was reached at M18 when the ENGINE system was demonstrated as its MVP, meaning, that the simulation, data analysis, instrumentation and measurement and experimental activities across WPs have contributed to the WP1 ENGINE demonstrator and performed linking in analysis of defect generation mechanisms and their effects from the beginning of the ENGINE workflow and value chain (steelmaking) to end-use of the studied connecting rod component as a part of a marine engine. Thus, the ENGINE system can track the respective manufacturing stages and systematically identify effects to product performance. The respective capability then naturally enables inference and optimization across the workflow and analysis of following impacts (e.g. by way of LCA/LCC) and is a step towards enabling decision-making based on the generated knowledge of the defects, their root causes and impacts to manufactured products.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The vast scope the ENGINE covers with its demonstrator has been established in terms of its technical scope and viability, detailed specifications being now available for the different technical, sustainability and training subject areas of the activity. The extent of how ENGINE approaches the defect free manufacturing scope has been during the work indicated to be as ambitious as seen during proposal and kickoff stages, but this is now yielding clear and also concrete benefits when the "big picture" of the ENGINE project covers domains and possibilities not previously addressed. The findings already in such respect are seen beyond SoA and the partners are finding technical, business and sustainability associated possibilities and potential by exploring previously unused areas.

ENGINE M7 at M18 when the ENGINE system was demonstrated is a key step in the project beyond the state-of-the-art. For the first time the causalities material and product manufacturing can be traced across all critical steps of product manufacturing by a workflow comprising of several connected and interfaced steps and modules of the ENGINE toolbox, ENGINE exchange and ENGINE production constituting the ENGINE system. This is a key outcome of the project and at this stage critical in order to be able to mature and further develop and deploy the capabilities during the latter half of the project.