Final Report Summary - TRANSPARENCY (Adaptive Business Collaboration by progressive knowledge sharing and engineering)
Executive Summary:
The vision of TRANSPARENCY is to enable European machine tool builders to establish knowledge-based business collaborations with machine designers, machine tool end users and component suppliers for the design and operation of specialized machine tools. The project shall enable European market players to gain competitive advantages against low cost competitors by tailoring machine designs to life-cycle requirements, enhancing machine component and machines with inherent knowledge and allowing a continuous knowledge exchange between machine designers, machine builders, component suppliers and machine end users.
More precisely, TRANSPARENCY pursues the following objectives:
• Improve the collaborative conceptual design of specialized machine tools
• Intensify the gathering, sharing and re-using of knowledge during the entire machine tool life-time
• Enhance life cycle costing and performance predictions for specialized machine tools
• Develop more intelligent machine components, which holds design and procedural knowledge and are capable of collecting and analyzing operational knowledge
Final results of the Transparency project
First, TRANSPARENCY develops a knowledge-based Co-Design methodology to improve the collaborative conceptual design. This methodology will allow estimations of key performance indicators of machine tools during the early conceptual machine design.
Furthermore, TRANSPARENCY develops a Co-Design Environment (CDE), which will serve as a knowledge sharing environment for the machine tool industry and will be based on semantic technology. It will provide a coherent web-based user interface for different stakeholders and will provide interfaces to the main software components, which will be developed inside the project. It will guide the designer through the process and additionally provides specific life-cycle information during this process if they are available.
• The structuring and analysis of data inside the Co-Design environment will be based on adaptive structure for knowledge representation in the machine tool industry
• The Co-Design methodology for specialized machine tools will be supported inside the Co-
Design environment by a integrated Co-Design workflow tool
Last, a set of early design assessment and simulation models and tools for key performance indicators like life cycle costing, stiffness and predictive overall equipment effectiveness is developed. The tools are linked the Co-Design environment.
In addition, Active Components, holding design and procedural knowledge and capable of collecting and analyzing operational knowledge, as well as a transparent HMI were developed to support the maintenance and operation of machines.
The project’s technical innovations lead to the following impacts:
• Performance predictions for machine tools during the early design phase
• Provision of design knowledge and analysis logic on the shop floor
• More efficient conceptual design process with increased transparency for all stakeholders
• Increased rate of re-use and recycling of components.
Project Context and Objectives:
The TRANSPARENCY project pursued the following objectives:
• Improve the collaborative conceptual design of specialized machine tools
• Intensify the gathering, sharing and re-using of knowledge during the entire machine tool
• life-time
• Enhance life cycle costing and performance predictions for specialized machine tools
• Develop more intelligent machine components, which holds design and procedural knowledge and are capable of collecting and analyzing operational knowledge
Based on these overall project objectives, more specific objectives for each work packages can be defined:
In the first 6 months, the main objective of WP1 was to launch the overall scientific activities in the TRANSPARENCY project. More precisely, the industrial requirements of the consortium partners had to be gathered and analyzed as well as the overall concepts and architecture of the Transparency software components had to be defined.
Then, starting from M6 of the project, the scientific and technical work in the RTD work packages WP3, WP4, WP5 were commenced.
For the second half of TRANSPARENCY the primary intention had been to finalize the scientific work in WP1, 3, 4, 5and 6. On the other hand, a major effort was spent on the integration of the scientific developments and the set-up of a demonstrations scenario (WP7) for the final presentation of the project results.
Furthermore, one major objective was also to disseminate the scientific and technological results of TRANSPARENCY actively and to explore potential overlap with other, related projects and ventures to initiate further developments. In parallel, the exploitation strategy for the TRANSPARENCY results has been refined.
In WP1 a detailed investigation of existing and potential novel business models in the machine tool industry was executed. Also intellectual property aspects of enhanced knowledge sharing among the partners were analyzed resulting in guidelines and reports (partly public) for the benefit of MT stakeholders.
In the dissemination work package (WP2) the main objectives were to establish a project identity, a web-site, process IPR and patent surveys, define exploitable results and to start scientific and industrial dissemination activities. Therefore WP2 focused on general dissemination and enhanced, targeted dissemination during the final project phase. During the whole time WP2 accompanied the project facilitating the exploitations of the results which includes amongst others the continuous refinement and analysis of exploitable results as well as assessing exploitation claims. Regarding to IPR a summary of and methodology for correlation of activities was prepared. Also an active networking with related projects to explore overlap and potential synergies to be exploited through information sharing and/or collaboration went along with the project.
In WP3 the main objective was the development of a component integration architecture with plug & play capabilities, the implementation of a human machine interfaces (HMI) for the machine tool and the development of the active components themselves. For all these developments the finalization date was M20.
In WP4, the two main objectives were to design the first iteration of the structure of knowledge representation (ontology) for the MT industry as well as to implement the prototype for the distributed web-based GUI with content analysis and semantic annotations, which are one of the central software components of the Transparency Co-Design environment. Additionally concepts for the life-cycle long gathering of knowledge resulting in methods and tools for the gathering of maintenance data from the shop floor were developed.
The main target of WP5 was the development of a Co-Design methodology extension, which is an embedded workflow component in the Co-Design environment. Furthermore the implementation of the CO-Design methodology environment as a software tool to support the conceptual design steps had to be commenced inside this period. The extension accesses heterogeneous data like customer requirements, component specifications as well as experience and maintenance reports stored in the CDE via a semantic data interface.
WP6, which started in M15, had the main objective to specify the architecture of the assessment and validation framework, which ensures the integration of the light-weight design prediction tools (developed in TRANSPARENCY) and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) tools with the Co-Design environment. WP6 targeted the development of early design assessment and prediction tools (including tools for Life Cycle Cost (LCC), predictive Overall Equipment Effectiveness (pOEE), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), static stiffness and damping and material removal rate). All tools focus on the early design phase of machine tools and will be integrated in the CDE.
In the demonstration work package (WP7) the project’s demonstrators and quality goals were
defined (M7-M8), while the main demonstration activities were executed in the second project period. WP7 elaborated the roadmap for demonstration and was responsible for the verification of the different information items regarding to the design process and the customer. Also the preparation of final demonstration of TRANSPARENCY results was part of it.
In WP8 the implementation of the project interim reporting for M19-24 and M25-30 was done. Also the work package terminated the project in administrative and financial terms including implementation of the final reporting process and submission of the final project report.
Project Results:
The main aim of TRANSPARENCY in the first 6 months has been to launch the different activities on which later developments will be dependent on. Thus, industrial requirements and constraints for the Transparency objectives were gathered and analysed and the concepts for a requirement-driven, knowledge-based life-long distributed Co-Design environment for machine-tool design and operation were stabilized.
First, based on a newly enhanced Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology for managing project requirements, 24 functional and 15 basic requirements have been gathered from the industrial partners in the project and prioritized according to the perspective of different customer types. Secondly, the TRANSPARENCY overall architecture has been defined, by taking into account the definition of execution environments, the interfaces to external systems, use cases and components descriptions. In parallel, first specifications for a technical showcase have been defined in order to support analysis and testing of the semantic technology for the project.
Starting from month 6 of the project the scientific and technical work in the RTD work packages WP3, WP4, WP5 has been commenced. In WP3 the main objective is the development of active component and transparent Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) at the machine tool itself. In the second 6-months period, this work package has focused on defining the relevant design and procedural knowledge, which shall be made available and shall be gathered at the machine tool itself. In addition, the software architecture for integrating a number of active components inside one machine tool and for representing its TRANSPARENCY functionality inside a common machine tool HMI has been developed. A first iteration of the foreseen hardware demonstrator has been successfully built up, whose results have been presented at the 12 month consortium meeting. Finally the software is capable to gather and to display data from different active components by frequently scanning the USB ports and transferring the data from the components storage to the PC. In addition to that, the software interfaces an additional software system in order to apply rules for active components. Rules for IEF Werner NC axis for temperature and current monitoring are available.
The second prototype focusses on the integration of more sophisticated rules for IEF Werner active components as well as on improving the component integration software for multi-component plug-in. The second prototype is based on real hardware of the partners IEF Werner and Harms & Wende. The core of the collaborative environment is the plug-in software designed and implemented by partner Gamax while partner FIDIA is mainly responsible for the implementation of an advance HMI for their machines implemented as stand-alone-software.
WP4 has analyzed the data requirements derived from the different use cases during the design of a machine tool like Life Cycle Cost (LCC) prediction and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) prediction for a specialized machine tool. The corresponding data items have been analyzed for interdependencies and have been modelled in the TRANSPARENCY structures for knowledge representation for the machine tool industry. To perform this task an ontology language has been used. The TRANSPRANCY knowledge structure is the core component of the semantic backbone of the Co-Design environment. Furthermore concepts and tools were developed to gather and interlink knowledge from the entire life-time of machine tools. Additionally a mobile application for data gathering was developed focusing on preventive and corrective maintenance data, which are most helpful for machine and component builder to improve machine designs. Knowledge gathered by the mobile application can be integrated in the main structure for knowledge representation.
In WP5 the involved partners have investigated the fundamentals for a collaborative conceptual design process for machine tools. The potentials of such an approach for the special requirements of the European machine tool industry have been analyzed and described. Based on this investigation, the TRANSPARENCY co-design methodology has been developed leading the designer through an early design phase for machine tools. A web based frontend allows the designer entering relevant design data which use the knowledge structure of WP4. This extension is fully integrated in the co-design environment (WP4) as it uses the same content of the database. Furthermore external design tool and a semantic inference machine are integral parts of the overall co-design environment. Also a KPI Dashboard was developed and integrated enabling the designer to calculate and compare a first approximation of different indicators for different designs. This framework allows the integration of several different calculations. For demonstration life cycle cost and predictive overall equipment efficiency were integrated. The methodology for calculating those KPIs is part of the results of WP6.
In WP6, which is dedicated to the development of the early design assessment and prediction tools and the integration of commercial-off-the-shelf-tools, work has been commenced in month 15 of the project. The aim of this work package has been to create a machine tool component-based evaluation, analysis and simulation environment which will be able to assess the expected “integrated” behaviour of one-of-a-kind complex machine tools. The assessment and verification of complex machine tools against the set of user requirements is a very important aspect of the machine tool design cycle. Particularly the assessment of a machine tool’s expected performance and behaviour characteristics before it is actually being built is very desirable. The earlier in the design process estimations of the expected performance for alternative design concepts can be made the more the design process can be streamlined avoiding unnecessary design iterations.
The motivation in this work package has been to create a set of tools which can assess the expected performance of one-of-a-kind machine tools based on the known behaviour and performance characteristics of their constituent components. The knowledge enriched component models developed in WP3 and WP4 are used as a foundation for behaviour synthesis methods which are linked to state-of-the-art off-the-shelf analysis and simulation software tools.
The result is an engineering framework for component-based complex machine tools which can integrate different tools as needed. The engineering framework is closely aligned with the machine tool co-design methodology developed in WP5. The final calculation models have been defined in collaboration with WP4 and key knowledge items have been incorporated into the ontology. The main outcome of different calculation models and tools based on key design components of a machine tool are the following:
Three approaches have been developed to support the estimation of life cycle cost during the design and operational lifecycle based on TRANSPARENCY knowledge structure:
1. LCC Lightweight approach (Formulas for usage in CDE; Aim: fast help for decision between design alternatives)
2. Combination to VDMA-Standard (Excel-Tool to transfer from TRANSPARENCY structure to VDMA Excel-Form)
3. Combination to VDMA-Standard (Excel-Tool on high level for sensitivity analysis
Approach for a predicted OEE (pOEE) has been derived. An Excel-Tool has been programmed for a combination to knowledge structure of TRANSPARENCY (knowledge structure was affected by pOEE development as well as LCC development). Knowledge items are used both for LCC and pOEE estimation allowing a more effective use of the knowledge and reducing the required input information. The Excel-Tool is guiding the user to derive future Quality rate estimation by:
• Influences on accuracy (Geometric/Kinematic error; Static/Dynamic Error; Thermal Error;
Other Errors (incl. clamping/fixture,…)
• Weighting influences on new design with AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process)
• Comparison of influences with existing design
• Prognosis of future cp / cpk for a (future and different Tolerances) based on influence weighting/estimation and cp /cpk of existing machine
For the Transparency project, the project consortium felt it was important to develop simple to use tools that could quickly determine the environmental impact of a number of design alternatives at a fairly course granularity without the need for lengthy tutorials or long courses. Microsoft Excel was chosen as a design platform due to its familiarity to most engineering staff and its suitability for developing a simple form based tool to calculate the carbon footprint.
The last part of WP6 addressed the “informational gap” between early stages in design, where changes are cheap, but certainty about performance characteristics of machine-tools are low and late stages in design, where performance characteristics can be known well by detailed simulation, but changes are already cost-intensive.
Therefore two factors have been identified as two of the main performance characteristics when assessing alternative designs of machine tools: expected material removal rate and static and dynamic stiffness.
The Material removal rate prediction tool for machine tools has been developed as an Excel based form tool that would help machine tool designers in the spindle selection on the basis of productivity targets of the machine tool user. The software tool requires as inputs form the machine tool users:
- Desired cutting parameters (productivity)
- Essential geometrical data of cutting tool
- Material to be cut
The outputs are the corresponding material removal rate and the net power requirement for the spindle. Microsoft Excel was chosen as a design platform due to its familiarity to most engineering staff and its suitability for developing a simple form based tool to calculate the carbon footprint.
An analytical model to readily compare different machine tool architectures in terms of more complex performance indicators such as static and dynamic behaviour has been developed. The purpose was to use this static and dynamic information in supporting the decision making during early stages of machine tool design. Obtained information is to supplement currently modelled KPIs such as life cycle cost predictions.
Two approaches have been developed and assessed:
- Reduced Parametric FE Model
- Substructuring using Receptance Coupling
The parametric FE model has been developed using orthogonal orientated components to reduce the complexity. Hence, a Finite Element (FE) modelling using 1D parametric designs could be used to avoid that limitation covering TRANSPARENCY requirements and complementing analytical stiffness approach. The advantages of this approach are:
- Better graphical visualization
- Less effort to develop models
- All the advantages of using commercial software
The model has been applied to two machine tool architectures for validation. The results show good agreement between the models.
Motivation of using the Substructuring Approach was to create an analytical model for the prediction the static and dynamic stiffness of machine tools during early design stages. Substructuring allows to use a model which supports the component based and parametric construction of analytical models.
Dynamic behaviour is represented in the form of frequency response functions which provide details on:
- Static stiffness
- Critical resonant frequencies
- Variation of response amplitude with frequency
Rather than using time expensive FE models, reduced models have been utilised to predict dynamic behaviour of a machine tool. The modelling approach is based on the substructure receptance coupling method. Receptance refers to response for given excitation and can be obtained either analytically or experimentally. The accuracy of end result solely dependent on quality/ accuracy of component receptance data.
Potential Impact:
As an important part of an active and fruitful promotion, it is essential to assess the quality and impact of the visited events. To this end, SEZ prepared a dissemination event feedback questionnaire, which is supposed to be duly filled by the partners after each relevant event in order to firstly, keep track on the activities and, secondly, document well the nature of the activity, the type/size of audience addresses and the received feedback. The dissemination feedback form was distributed to all partners
During the project SEZ prepared and released 7 newsletters: These newsletters are available for download on the project website. In addition, SEZ spread issue 6 via social media (linkedin). The newsletters contained editorial, news about the project progress and past project events (such as partner meetings, fairs visited by partners, etc.), an article about the Industrial Interest Group (IIG), interesting initiatives in the field and announcements of relevant MT industry events. Several partners contributed to the newsletter by providing articles:
FIDIA, DIAD: Collaboration in the European Machine-Tool industry: added value of implementing enhanced knowledge management approach (#3)
HWH: article about Transparency Active Components (#4)
SEZ, HWH: article about the new European project “I-RAMP³” (#5)
CESI: article about TRANSPARENCY tools and their potential use and applications (#6).
In addition, the issue #6 contained an interview with the project coordinator Marcus Michen (IPA) reflecting on the projects achievements, goals towards the project final phase and outlook (prepared by SEZ and IPA).
IEF: article about intelligent linear axis (#7)
UNOTT: article on static/dynamic stiffness model (#7)
SEZ: article on main project results and article on services in manufacturing (#7)
SEZ contributed several articles for diverse issues of the TRANSPARENCY newsletter.
3 scientific publications emerged from the project work:
IPA, IDEKO, GMX, UNOTT: “Collaborative machine tool design environment based on semantic Wiki technology” in Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Knowledge Management, ECKM 2012.
IDEKO, IPA and UNOTT: “Fundamentals for a Co-Design methodology for MT using semantic representation” in the IJCIM was accepted for publication and finally published in February 2013.
UNOTT: “Early Dynamic Behaviour Assessment of Modular Machine Tool Designs Utilising
Substructure Receptance Coupling Techniques” in preparation. To be submitted to Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture in September/October 2013.
The general project article providing an overview of the project’s objectives and the present status of its implementation was updated. In order to achieve a higher impact, this article was translated released in English (SEZ), German (SEZ) and Spanish (IDEKO).
Press releases trace back to the publishing of the updated general article (IEF Werner, partners!?), annual reports of Fraunhofer IPA and SEZ, a press article by IEF Werner, an article by IPA in “EU Research” and several technical articles about featured project results (newsletter) to be used for release in other relevant magazines, too, after project end.
A roll-up to be used by partners for the dissemination of the project at events was prepared. The main aim of this roll-up is not totally to explain the aim of the project, but rather to catch the eye of the people by pictures and short sentences being the spirit of the project like“ collaborative machine-tool design and operation”.
Starting from the dissemination workshop during the M30 partner meeting, SEZ initiated and pushed an active networking of the partners with other project consortia working in a similar thematic scope as TRANSPARENCY. The following consortia were selected for contact: MANUCLOUD IPA), SUPREME (IPA), IMAGINE (IPA), DEMAT (CESI), IFACOM (FIDIA, SEZ), COMET (TEKS), FRAME (DIAD), MESAP (FIDIA, SEZ).
Several partners participated in fairs or workshops or conferences, at which they either presented TANSPARENCY or diffused project flyers.
Regarding to the management of IP issues as well as the exploitation and technology watch two exploitation strategy seminars (ESS) were organized during the project. SEZ has supported the coordinator in the organization of an exploitation session for the M24 partner meeting. Partners responsible of an exploitable result were asked to update first the list of results and then the description of the result for the exploitation seminar.
Results are summarized in the deliverable D2.5 IPR report.
In brief summary, the major objectives of the IPR report were:
• Compile IPR handling within the TRANSPARENCY consortium
• Devise a correlation between all relevant IPR related information
• Illustrate the elaborated approach and the provided benefits
• Present results of an updated patent search
As already mentioned above, the present IPR report goes beyond a bare summary of IPR activities. It provides a methodology for a structured and consistent use of IPR related information, which can then be used for different purposes depending on the specific interest. Ultimately, the approach is supposed to be a generic tool to facilitate the process of elucidating exploitable results, interpreting claims and assessing the IP landscape.
The list of exploitable results and the Result Characterisation Sheets (RCSs) were updated, revised and analyzed. In addition, a refinement of the list of exploitable results has been done: 15 final exploitable results were defined out of which result number 11 was split into four sub-results. The final exploitation claims together with some results of D2.5 are a relevant part of information for deliverable D2.4 -Technology Implementation Plan (TIP).
D2.4 explores potential strategies for migrating the foreground generated during the TRANSPARENCY project towards relevant markets. Its main purpose is to deliver ideas to achieve the greatest benefit for all stakeholders. The objective of the TIPs is twofold:
• To outline a strategy for the potential use of the results beyond the project
• To suggest promising R&D take-up activities (follow-up projects, further development)
The deliverable gives attention to two categories of results: on the one hand project foreground that had been identified as “exploitable results” by the consortium, i.e. those results, which suggest a real commercializable potential, are subject to a TIP. On the other hand, other results, which are not directly commercializable, yet beneficial and of relevance for the project partners are outlined.
In parallel, the keywords describing the TRANSPARENCY developed technologies were refined and newly ordered in order to perform the final patent search of the project. The methodology used as well as the results of the patent search is explained in the deliverable D2.5 IPR report.
List of Websites:
TRANSPARENCY website: http://www.transparency-project.eu/
Fraunhofer IPA (Coordinator)
Marcus Michen
Tel: +49 - 711 - 9701033
E-Mail: marcus.michen@ipa.fraunhofer.de
http://www.ipa.fraunhofer.de/
University of Nottingham (UNOTT)
Niels Lohse
E-Mail: niels.lohse@nottingham.ac.uk
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/
Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum
Patricia Wolny
Tel: +49 - 721 - 935 1924
E-Mail: wolny@steinbeis-europa.de
http://www.steinbeis-europa.de/
GAMAX Ltd.
Gabor Horvath
Tel: +36 (0) 20 99 29 628
E-Mail: gabor@gamax.hu
http://www.gamax.hu/
Harms & Wende GmbH & Co. KG.
Michael Peschl
Tel: +49 - 40 - 1805 1851
E-Mail: michael.peschl@hwh-karlsruhe.de
http://www.harms-wende.de/
DIAD GROUP
Anja Herrmann Praturlon
Tel: +39 0119973411
E-Mail: anja.hp@diadgroup.com
http://www.DIADGROUP.com/
TEKS SARL
Nicholas Court
E-Mail: nick.court@teks.eu.com
http://www.teks.eu.com/
IDEKO S.Coop.
Joseba Perez Bilbatua
Tel: +34 - 943 748 000
E-Mail: jerezbilbatua@ideko.es
http://www.ideko.es/
IEF Werner GmbH
Ulrich Moser
Tel: +49 - 7723 - 925 154
E-Mail: maneia@cesi.net
http://www.ief-werner.de/
Ce.S.I. Centro Studi Industriali
Gian Mauro Maneia
Tel: +39 02 26 70 70 07
E-Mail: maneia@cesi.net
http://www.cesi.net/
FIDIA SPA
Enrico Tamburini
Tel: +39 011 222 71 11
E-Mail: e.tamburini@fidia.it
http://www.fidia.it/
The vision of TRANSPARENCY is to enable European machine tool builders to establish knowledge-based business collaborations with machine designers, machine tool end users and component suppliers for the design and operation of specialized machine tools. The project shall enable European market players to gain competitive advantages against low cost competitors by tailoring machine designs to life-cycle requirements, enhancing machine component and machines with inherent knowledge and allowing a continuous knowledge exchange between machine designers, machine builders, component suppliers and machine end users.
More precisely, TRANSPARENCY pursues the following objectives:
• Improve the collaborative conceptual design of specialized machine tools
• Intensify the gathering, sharing and re-using of knowledge during the entire machine tool life-time
• Enhance life cycle costing and performance predictions for specialized machine tools
• Develop more intelligent machine components, which holds design and procedural knowledge and are capable of collecting and analyzing operational knowledge
Final results of the Transparency project
First, TRANSPARENCY develops a knowledge-based Co-Design methodology to improve the collaborative conceptual design. This methodology will allow estimations of key performance indicators of machine tools during the early conceptual machine design.
Furthermore, TRANSPARENCY develops a Co-Design Environment (CDE), which will serve as a knowledge sharing environment for the machine tool industry and will be based on semantic technology. It will provide a coherent web-based user interface for different stakeholders and will provide interfaces to the main software components, which will be developed inside the project. It will guide the designer through the process and additionally provides specific life-cycle information during this process if they are available.
• The structuring and analysis of data inside the Co-Design environment will be based on adaptive structure for knowledge representation in the machine tool industry
• The Co-Design methodology for specialized machine tools will be supported inside the Co-
Design environment by a integrated Co-Design workflow tool
Last, a set of early design assessment and simulation models and tools for key performance indicators like life cycle costing, stiffness and predictive overall equipment effectiveness is developed. The tools are linked the Co-Design environment.
In addition, Active Components, holding design and procedural knowledge and capable of collecting and analyzing operational knowledge, as well as a transparent HMI were developed to support the maintenance and operation of machines.
The project’s technical innovations lead to the following impacts:
• Performance predictions for machine tools during the early design phase
• Provision of design knowledge and analysis logic on the shop floor
• More efficient conceptual design process with increased transparency for all stakeholders
• Increased rate of re-use and recycling of components.
Project Context and Objectives:
The TRANSPARENCY project pursued the following objectives:
• Improve the collaborative conceptual design of specialized machine tools
• Intensify the gathering, sharing and re-using of knowledge during the entire machine tool
• life-time
• Enhance life cycle costing and performance predictions for specialized machine tools
• Develop more intelligent machine components, which holds design and procedural knowledge and are capable of collecting and analyzing operational knowledge
Based on these overall project objectives, more specific objectives for each work packages can be defined:
In the first 6 months, the main objective of WP1 was to launch the overall scientific activities in the TRANSPARENCY project. More precisely, the industrial requirements of the consortium partners had to be gathered and analyzed as well as the overall concepts and architecture of the Transparency software components had to be defined.
Then, starting from M6 of the project, the scientific and technical work in the RTD work packages WP3, WP4, WP5 were commenced.
For the second half of TRANSPARENCY the primary intention had been to finalize the scientific work in WP1, 3, 4, 5and 6. On the other hand, a major effort was spent on the integration of the scientific developments and the set-up of a demonstrations scenario (WP7) for the final presentation of the project results.
Furthermore, one major objective was also to disseminate the scientific and technological results of TRANSPARENCY actively and to explore potential overlap with other, related projects and ventures to initiate further developments. In parallel, the exploitation strategy for the TRANSPARENCY results has been refined.
In WP1 a detailed investigation of existing and potential novel business models in the machine tool industry was executed. Also intellectual property aspects of enhanced knowledge sharing among the partners were analyzed resulting in guidelines and reports (partly public) for the benefit of MT stakeholders.
In the dissemination work package (WP2) the main objectives were to establish a project identity, a web-site, process IPR and patent surveys, define exploitable results and to start scientific and industrial dissemination activities. Therefore WP2 focused on general dissemination and enhanced, targeted dissemination during the final project phase. During the whole time WP2 accompanied the project facilitating the exploitations of the results which includes amongst others the continuous refinement and analysis of exploitable results as well as assessing exploitation claims. Regarding to IPR a summary of and methodology for correlation of activities was prepared. Also an active networking with related projects to explore overlap and potential synergies to be exploited through information sharing and/or collaboration went along with the project.
In WP3 the main objective was the development of a component integration architecture with plug & play capabilities, the implementation of a human machine interfaces (HMI) for the machine tool and the development of the active components themselves. For all these developments the finalization date was M20.
In WP4, the two main objectives were to design the first iteration of the structure of knowledge representation (ontology) for the MT industry as well as to implement the prototype for the distributed web-based GUI with content analysis and semantic annotations, which are one of the central software components of the Transparency Co-Design environment. Additionally concepts for the life-cycle long gathering of knowledge resulting in methods and tools for the gathering of maintenance data from the shop floor were developed.
The main target of WP5 was the development of a Co-Design methodology extension, which is an embedded workflow component in the Co-Design environment. Furthermore the implementation of the CO-Design methodology environment as a software tool to support the conceptual design steps had to be commenced inside this period. The extension accesses heterogeneous data like customer requirements, component specifications as well as experience and maintenance reports stored in the CDE via a semantic data interface.
WP6, which started in M15, had the main objective to specify the architecture of the assessment and validation framework, which ensures the integration of the light-weight design prediction tools (developed in TRANSPARENCY) and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) tools with the Co-Design environment. WP6 targeted the development of early design assessment and prediction tools (including tools for Life Cycle Cost (LCC), predictive Overall Equipment Effectiveness (pOEE), Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), static stiffness and damping and material removal rate). All tools focus on the early design phase of machine tools and will be integrated in the CDE.
In the demonstration work package (WP7) the project’s demonstrators and quality goals were
defined (M7-M8), while the main demonstration activities were executed in the second project period. WP7 elaborated the roadmap for demonstration and was responsible for the verification of the different information items regarding to the design process and the customer. Also the preparation of final demonstration of TRANSPARENCY results was part of it.
In WP8 the implementation of the project interim reporting for M19-24 and M25-30 was done. Also the work package terminated the project in administrative and financial terms including implementation of the final reporting process and submission of the final project report.
Project Results:
The main aim of TRANSPARENCY in the first 6 months has been to launch the different activities on which later developments will be dependent on. Thus, industrial requirements and constraints for the Transparency objectives were gathered and analysed and the concepts for a requirement-driven, knowledge-based life-long distributed Co-Design environment for machine-tool design and operation were stabilized.
First, based on a newly enhanced Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology for managing project requirements, 24 functional and 15 basic requirements have been gathered from the industrial partners in the project and prioritized according to the perspective of different customer types. Secondly, the TRANSPARENCY overall architecture has been defined, by taking into account the definition of execution environments, the interfaces to external systems, use cases and components descriptions. In parallel, first specifications for a technical showcase have been defined in order to support analysis and testing of the semantic technology for the project.
Starting from month 6 of the project the scientific and technical work in the RTD work packages WP3, WP4, WP5 has been commenced. In WP3 the main objective is the development of active component and transparent Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) at the machine tool itself. In the second 6-months period, this work package has focused on defining the relevant design and procedural knowledge, which shall be made available and shall be gathered at the machine tool itself. In addition, the software architecture for integrating a number of active components inside one machine tool and for representing its TRANSPARENCY functionality inside a common machine tool HMI has been developed. A first iteration of the foreseen hardware demonstrator has been successfully built up, whose results have been presented at the 12 month consortium meeting. Finally the software is capable to gather and to display data from different active components by frequently scanning the USB ports and transferring the data from the components storage to the PC. In addition to that, the software interfaces an additional software system in order to apply rules for active components. Rules for IEF Werner NC axis for temperature and current monitoring are available.
The second prototype focusses on the integration of more sophisticated rules for IEF Werner active components as well as on improving the component integration software for multi-component plug-in. The second prototype is based on real hardware of the partners IEF Werner and Harms & Wende. The core of the collaborative environment is the plug-in software designed and implemented by partner Gamax while partner FIDIA is mainly responsible for the implementation of an advance HMI for their machines implemented as stand-alone-software.
WP4 has analyzed the data requirements derived from the different use cases during the design of a machine tool like Life Cycle Cost (LCC) prediction and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) prediction for a specialized machine tool. The corresponding data items have been analyzed for interdependencies and have been modelled in the TRANSPARENCY structures for knowledge representation for the machine tool industry. To perform this task an ontology language has been used. The TRANSPRANCY knowledge structure is the core component of the semantic backbone of the Co-Design environment. Furthermore concepts and tools were developed to gather and interlink knowledge from the entire life-time of machine tools. Additionally a mobile application for data gathering was developed focusing on preventive and corrective maintenance data, which are most helpful for machine and component builder to improve machine designs. Knowledge gathered by the mobile application can be integrated in the main structure for knowledge representation.
In WP5 the involved partners have investigated the fundamentals for a collaborative conceptual design process for machine tools. The potentials of such an approach for the special requirements of the European machine tool industry have been analyzed and described. Based on this investigation, the TRANSPARENCY co-design methodology has been developed leading the designer through an early design phase for machine tools. A web based frontend allows the designer entering relevant design data which use the knowledge structure of WP4. This extension is fully integrated in the co-design environment (WP4) as it uses the same content of the database. Furthermore external design tool and a semantic inference machine are integral parts of the overall co-design environment. Also a KPI Dashboard was developed and integrated enabling the designer to calculate and compare a first approximation of different indicators for different designs. This framework allows the integration of several different calculations. For demonstration life cycle cost and predictive overall equipment efficiency were integrated. The methodology for calculating those KPIs is part of the results of WP6.
In WP6, which is dedicated to the development of the early design assessment and prediction tools and the integration of commercial-off-the-shelf-tools, work has been commenced in month 15 of the project. The aim of this work package has been to create a machine tool component-based evaluation, analysis and simulation environment which will be able to assess the expected “integrated” behaviour of one-of-a-kind complex machine tools. The assessment and verification of complex machine tools against the set of user requirements is a very important aspect of the machine tool design cycle. Particularly the assessment of a machine tool’s expected performance and behaviour characteristics before it is actually being built is very desirable. The earlier in the design process estimations of the expected performance for alternative design concepts can be made the more the design process can be streamlined avoiding unnecessary design iterations.
The motivation in this work package has been to create a set of tools which can assess the expected performance of one-of-a-kind machine tools based on the known behaviour and performance characteristics of their constituent components. The knowledge enriched component models developed in WP3 and WP4 are used as a foundation for behaviour synthesis methods which are linked to state-of-the-art off-the-shelf analysis and simulation software tools.
The result is an engineering framework for component-based complex machine tools which can integrate different tools as needed. The engineering framework is closely aligned with the machine tool co-design methodology developed in WP5. The final calculation models have been defined in collaboration with WP4 and key knowledge items have been incorporated into the ontology. The main outcome of different calculation models and tools based on key design components of a machine tool are the following:
Three approaches have been developed to support the estimation of life cycle cost during the design and operational lifecycle based on TRANSPARENCY knowledge structure:
1. LCC Lightweight approach (Formulas for usage in CDE; Aim: fast help for decision between design alternatives)
2. Combination to VDMA-Standard (Excel-Tool to transfer from TRANSPARENCY structure to VDMA Excel-Form)
3. Combination to VDMA-Standard (Excel-Tool on high level for sensitivity analysis
Approach for a predicted OEE (pOEE) has been derived. An Excel-Tool has been programmed for a combination to knowledge structure of TRANSPARENCY (knowledge structure was affected by pOEE development as well as LCC development). Knowledge items are used both for LCC and pOEE estimation allowing a more effective use of the knowledge and reducing the required input information. The Excel-Tool is guiding the user to derive future Quality rate estimation by:
• Influences on accuracy (Geometric/Kinematic error; Static/Dynamic Error; Thermal Error;
Other Errors (incl. clamping/fixture,…)
• Weighting influences on new design with AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process)
• Comparison of influences with existing design
• Prognosis of future cp / cpk for a (future and different Tolerances) based on influence weighting/estimation and cp /cpk of existing machine
For the Transparency project, the project consortium felt it was important to develop simple to use tools that could quickly determine the environmental impact of a number of design alternatives at a fairly course granularity without the need for lengthy tutorials or long courses. Microsoft Excel was chosen as a design platform due to its familiarity to most engineering staff and its suitability for developing a simple form based tool to calculate the carbon footprint.
The last part of WP6 addressed the “informational gap” between early stages in design, where changes are cheap, but certainty about performance characteristics of machine-tools are low and late stages in design, where performance characteristics can be known well by detailed simulation, but changes are already cost-intensive.
Therefore two factors have been identified as two of the main performance characteristics when assessing alternative designs of machine tools: expected material removal rate and static and dynamic stiffness.
The Material removal rate prediction tool for machine tools has been developed as an Excel based form tool that would help machine tool designers in the spindle selection on the basis of productivity targets of the machine tool user. The software tool requires as inputs form the machine tool users:
- Desired cutting parameters (productivity)
- Essential geometrical data of cutting tool
- Material to be cut
The outputs are the corresponding material removal rate and the net power requirement for the spindle. Microsoft Excel was chosen as a design platform due to its familiarity to most engineering staff and its suitability for developing a simple form based tool to calculate the carbon footprint.
An analytical model to readily compare different machine tool architectures in terms of more complex performance indicators such as static and dynamic behaviour has been developed. The purpose was to use this static and dynamic information in supporting the decision making during early stages of machine tool design. Obtained information is to supplement currently modelled KPIs such as life cycle cost predictions.
Two approaches have been developed and assessed:
- Reduced Parametric FE Model
- Substructuring using Receptance Coupling
The parametric FE model has been developed using orthogonal orientated components to reduce the complexity. Hence, a Finite Element (FE) modelling using 1D parametric designs could be used to avoid that limitation covering TRANSPARENCY requirements and complementing analytical stiffness approach. The advantages of this approach are:
- Better graphical visualization
- Less effort to develop models
- All the advantages of using commercial software
The model has been applied to two machine tool architectures for validation. The results show good agreement between the models.
Motivation of using the Substructuring Approach was to create an analytical model for the prediction the static and dynamic stiffness of machine tools during early design stages. Substructuring allows to use a model which supports the component based and parametric construction of analytical models.
Dynamic behaviour is represented in the form of frequency response functions which provide details on:
- Static stiffness
- Critical resonant frequencies
- Variation of response amplitude with frequency
Rather than using time expensive FE models, reduced models have been utilised to predict dynamic behaviour of a machine tool. The modelling approach is based on the substructure receptance coupling method. Receptance refers to response for given excitation and can be obtained either analytically or experimentally. The accuracy of end result solely dependent on quality/ accuracy of component receptance data.
Potential Impact:
As an important part of an active and fruitful promotion, it is essential to assess the quality and impact of the visited events. To this end, SEZ prepared a dissemination event feedback questionnaire, which is supposed to be duly filled by the partners after each relevant event in order to firstly, keep track on the activities and, secondly, document well the nature of the activity, the type/size of audience addresses and the received feedback. The dissemination feedback form was distributed to all partners
During the project SEZ prepared and released 7 newsletters: These newsletters are available for download on the project website. In addition, SEZ spread issue 6 via social media (linkedin). The newsletters contained editorial, news about the project progress and past project events (such as partner meetings, fairs visited by partners, etc.), an article about the Industrial Interest Group (IIG), interesting initiatives in the field and announcements of relevant MT industry events. Several partners contributed to the newsletter by providing articles:
FIDIA, DIAD: Collaboration in the European Machine-Tool industry: added value of implementing enhanced knowledge management approach (#3)
HWH: article about Transparency Active Components (#4)
SEZ, HWH: article about the new European project “I-RAMP³” (#5)
CESI: article about TRANSPARENCY tools and their potential use and applications (#6).
In addition, the issue #6 contained an interview with the project coordinator Marcus Michen (IPA) reflecting on the projects achievements, goals towards the project final phase and outlook (prepared by SEZ and IPA).
IEF: article about intelligent linear axis (#7)
UNOTT: article on static/dynamic stiffness model (#7)
SEZ: article on main project results and article on services in manufacturing (#7)
SEZ contributed several articles for diverse issues of the TRANSPARENCY newsletter.
3 scientific publications emerged from the project work:
IPA, IDEKO, GMX, UNOTT: “Collaborative machine tool design environment based on semantic Wiki technology” in Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Knowledge Management, ECKM 2012.
IDEKO, IPA and UNOTT: “Fundamentals for a Co-Design methodology for MT using semantic representation” in the IJCIM was accepted for publication and finally published in February 2013.
UNOTT: “Early Dynamic Behaviour Assessment of Modular Machine Tool Designs Utilising
Substructure Receptance Coupling Techniques” in preparation. To be submitted to Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture in September/October 2013.
The general project article providing an overview of the project’s objectives and the present status of its implementation was updated. In order to achieve a higher impact, this article was translated released in English (SEZ), German (SEZ) and Spanish (IDEKO).
Press releases trace back to the publishing of the updated general article (IEF Werner, partners!?), annual reports of Fraunhofer IPA and SEZ, a press article by IEF Werner, an article by IPA in “EU Research” and several technical articles about featured project results (newsletter) to be used for release in other relevant magazines, too, after project end.
A roll-up to be used by partners for the dissemination of the project at events was prepared. The main aim of this roll-up is not totally to explain the aim of the project, but rather to catch the eye of the people by pictures and short sentences being the spirit of the project like“ collaborative machine-tool design and operation”.
Starting from the dissemination workshop during the M30 partner meeting, SEZ initiated and pushed an active networking of the partners with other project consortia working in a similar thematic scope as TRANSPARENCY. The following consortia were selected for contact: MANUCLOUD IPA), SUPREME (IPA), IMAGINE (IPA), DEMAT (CESI), IFACOM (FIDIA, SEZ), COMET (TEKS), FRAME (DIAD), MESAP (FIDIA, SEZ).
Several partners participated in fairs or workshops or conferences, at which they either presented TANSPARENCY or diffused project flyers.
Regarding to the management of IP issues as well as the exploitation and technology watch two exploitation strategy seminars (ESS) were organized during the project. SEZ has supported the coordinator in the organization of an exploitation session for the M24 partner meeting. Partners responsible of an exploitable result were asked to update first the list of results and then the description of the result for the exploitation seminar.
Results are summarized in the deliverable D2.5 IPR report.
In brief summary, the major objectives of the IPR report were:
• Compile IPR handling within the TRANSPARENCY consortium
• Devise a correlation between all relevant IPR related information
• Illustrate the elaborated approach and the provided benefits
• Present results of an updated patent search
As already mentioned above, the present IPR report goes beyond a bare summary of IPR activities. It provides a methodology for a structured and consistent use of IPR related information, which can then be used for different purposes depending on the specific interest. Ultimately, the approach is supposed to be a generic tool to facilitate the process of elucidating exploitable results, interpreting claims and assessing the IP landscape.
The list of exploitable results and the Result Characterisation Sheets (RCSs) were updated, revised and analyzed. In addition, a refinement of the list of exploitable results has been done: 15 final exploitable results were defined out of which result number 11 was split into four sub-results. The final exploitation claims together with some results of D2.5 are a relevant part of information for deliverable D2.4 -Technology Implementation Plan (TIP).
D2.4 explores potential strategies for migrating the foreground generated during the TRANSPARENCY project towards relevant markets. Its main purpose is to deliver ideas to achieve the greatest benefit for all stakeholders. The objective of the TIPs is twofold:
• To outline a strategy for the potential use of the results beyond the project
• To suggest promising R&D take-up activities (follow-up projects, further development)
The deliverable gives attention to two categories of results: on the one hand project foreground that had been identified as “exploitable results” by the consortium, i.e. those results, which suggest a real commercializable potential, are subject to a TIP. On the other hand, other results, which are not directly commercializable, yet beneficial and of relevance for the project partners are outlined.
In parallel, the keywords describing the TRANSPARENCY developed technologies were refined and newly ordered in order to perform the final patent search of the project. The methodology used as well as the results of the patent search is explained in the deliverable D2.5 IPR report.
List of Websites:
TRANSPARENCY website: http://www.transparency-project.eu/
Fraunhofer IPA (Coordinator)
Marcus Michen
Tel: +49 - 711 - 9701033
E-Mail: marcus.michen@ipa.fraunhofer.de
http://www.ipa.fraunhofer.de/
University of Nottingham (UNOTT)
Niels Lohse
E-Mail: niels.lohse@nottingham.ac.uk
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/
Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum
Patricia Wolny
Tel: +49 - 721 - 935 1924
E-Mail: wolny@steinbeis-europa.de
http://www.steinbeis-europa.de/
GAMAX Ltd.
Gabor Horvath
Tel: +36 (0) 20 99 29 628
E-Mail: gabor@gamax.hu
http://www.gamax.hu/
Harms & Wende GmbH & Co. KG.
Michael Peschl
Tel: +49 - 40 - 1805 1851
E-Mail: michael.peschl@hwh-karlsruhe.de
http://www.harms-wende.de/
DIAD GROUP
Anja Herrmann Praturlon
Tel: +39 0119973411
E-Mail: anja.hp@diadgroup.com
http://www.DIADGROUP.com/
TEKS SARL
Nicholas Court
E-Mail: nick.court@teks.eu.com
http://www.teks.eu.com/
IDEKO S.Coop.
Joseba Perez Bilbatua
Tel: +34 - 943 748 000
E-Mail: jerezbilbatua@ideko.es
http://www.ideko.es/
IEF Werner GmbH
Ulrich Moser
Tel: +49 - 7723 - 925 154
E-Mail: maneia@cesi.net
http://www.ief-werner.de/
Ce.S.I. Centro Studi Industriali
Gian Mauro Maneia
Tel: +39 02 26 70 70 07
E-Mail: maneia@cesi.net
http://www.cesi.net/
FIDIA SPA
Enrico Tamburini
Tel: +39 011 222 71 11
E-Mail: e.tamburini@fidia.it
http://www.fidia.it/