Industrial Manufacturing strategies for distributed control and resilient, rapidly responsive and reconfigurable supply chains.

Project Information

MODUL4R

Grant agreement ID: 101091859

DOI

10.3030/101091859

Project closed

EC signature date 18 November 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 30 June 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 5 999 941,26

EU contribution

€ 5 999 941,25

Coordinated by

FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - MODUL4R (Industrial Manufacturing strategies for distributed control and resilient, rapidly responsive and reconfigurable supply chains.)

Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2025-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The Horizon-Europe project MODUL4R project aims to develop advanced industrial manufacturing strategies for distributed control and resilient, rapidly responsive and reconfigurable supply chains. This will allow low-volume production of new products and contributes to rapidly adapt to unexpected situations and changing supply chains. The project focusses on four pillars, offering hardware and software components:
1. Resilience against changes in customer and societal demands and supply chain disruption
2. Modular technologies for flexible manufacturing operations
3. Simulation, Artificial Intelligence and interfaces with the Industrial Metaverse
4. Human-centred technologies and upskilling of staff
With these four pillars, MODUL4R will motivate a shift towards a “think small” paradigm through competitive and resilient high-performance manufacturing with green and circular practices. This will significantly accelerate the twin green and digital transitions of the manufacturing sector and supports European leadership in flexible and responsive factories.
To do that, we have formed a strong consortium of nineteen EU-based partners from nine member states (Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Finland, Austria, Slovenia) and 1 from Switzerland representing both industry and academia, having ample experience in cutting-edge technologies and active presence in the EU manufacturing. Three manufacturing companies of the consortium will ensure the project’s access to production lines for deploying, validating and evaluating the project’s results as well as the social return of investment.

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

MODUL4R is a multi-disciplinary project integrating innovative modular technologies such as smart interfaces, AAS ready controllers and services, smart sensors and devices, and IEC61499 CPS controllers to achieve resilient, rapidly responsive, flexible, and reconfigurable manufacturing operations across the supply chain. MODUL4R will benefit its users with its predicting capabilities, interoperable data and digital twins, as well as the flexibility and distributed control with multi-level decision support, and overall process optimization and adaptability. The use of real-time at the right time on the fly simulations and interfaces to the novel Industrial metaverse will predict possible unwanted events. The correlation of the produced outcome with the performance and processes for each design will also allow reconfiguration of the system to prevent possible losses from the optimal result. MODUL4R will enable resilient, flexible and sustainable by design processes, in order to make affordable low volume and distributed productions.
To support this, MODUL4R smart hardware interfaces, the CPPSoS distributed platform to orchestrate them, and the digital twins will allow flexible manufacturing operations. The implementation of Reactive, Coordination and Cognitive functions through smart services will be deployed and operated. The Reactive Functions are intended for fast reaction and close to machine operation (process adaptation). The Cognitive Functions are intended for rich condition, quality, and sensitivity monitoring and process simulation and prediction, as well as for the suitable production strategy identification. They exploit reactive functions outputs, collective intelligence development through collaborative analytics for the supply chain, customer, societal and worker needs, the material, shape and functionalities of products, and the integrated information framework regarding the failures and the overall process performance. The Coordination functions are the critical element in closing the MODUL4R loop bringing to life flexible manufacturing operations in the form of specific design and process chains requirements through concrete dynamic operation and reconfigurability management (operations).
WP1 - WP4 are already finished, and all milestones are successfully passed.

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)

MODUL4R proposes novel approaches in modular technologies, by considering changes in customer demands through data driven engineering approaches, while improve the sustainability of operations with new and improved processes to meet societal demands. The flexibility of manufacturing operations will be achieved through hybrid computation environments and control architectures for modularity and scalability. The use of industrial metaverse and link together actors from the supply chain, customers and engineers will ensure accepted products. The simulations are seamlessly transferred to control and speak with legacy systems in a vendor-agnostic format.

The suggested modular technologies will cover all levels, from the IT to the OT. Using smart hardware, devices, sensors, and metrology equipment will be deployed and integrated to the current manufacturing modules, establishing CPPS systems. The concept of CPPSoS and connections to AAS will allow the communication and automation with the virtual commissioning system. This will allow to automate and control varying batch sizes (incl. single lots). Human centric technologies will store, manage, analyse the tacit knowledge of expert operators helping the ML system to get trained. Swarm intelligence will share the collected knowledge and through the digital assistants and explainable Decision Support Systems will allow the control and actions to be taken at all levels of the manufacturing process, supported by the MODUL4R’s 8 industrial strategies.

MODUL4R will ensure strong understanding by the information flow among users and interfaces to industrial metaverse. Real-time communication help involved parties to interact, explore “what-if” scenarios, witnessing in AR/VR how reconfiguration can be achieved. Data driven engineering solutions for products and processes will be adjusted to different organisational regimes. The interfaces of all modules are interoperable and seamlessly connected. 3 pilots will evaluate the actions for successful deployment, how to organise and how to reconfigure their manufacturing systems. Digital assistance and trainings will be designed to improve user understanding. Seamless integration of HW/SW components will involve metrology, inspection, NDT, and in-line sensors to ensure high performance, availability, and quality assessments. Machine learning and simulations will help to further improve results, while improved rump-up times, yields, Cpk, OEE will result in energy reduction and new sustainable business models; corroborated by LCA & environmental assessments towards sustainable/circular chains.

MODUL4R concept