Skip to main content
European Commission logo
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary
Content archived on 2024-04-19

Improved Productivity and Quality through Upgrading of Machine Tools

Objective

In the new Laender of Germany a large number of manufacturing enterprises will only be able to become competitive on a European scale if they are able to achieve large increases in productivity and quality of output. Replacement of outdated and substandard production equipment would require an investment greatly in excess of the funds available. A number of the surviving machine tool manufacturers in the new Laender have joined forces to apply recent developments in factory communications and control techniques to enable their machines to be upgraded. As a result, the manufacturing companies using their equipment will improve their own competitiveness and simultaneously the machine tool vendors will protect their installed base against erosion from Asian sources.

The various subsystems which constitute machine tools for drilling, milling, turning, gear-cutting, etc have different life-spans, and some subsystems undergo a number of innovation cycles during the total life-time of the machine. In many cases electrical control systems, drives, CNC controllers, CAD/CAM interfaces and factory communications modules can be upgraded at a fraction of the cost of replacing the entire machine. The project partners will develop generic modernisation programs for conventional, NC and CNC machines using experience gained in this field at the Universitaet Bremen.

30 to 40% of conventional and 80% of the NC-machine tools are applicable for different modernization strategies. Particularly SME's need modern "low-cost" equipment to improve their productivity and quality. In this kind modernization is a suitable way to realize this aim.

Topic(s)

Data not available

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

Data not available

Coordinator

UNIVERSITÄT BREMEN
EU contribution
No data
Address
ENRIQUE-SCHMIDT STRAßE
28359 BREMEN
Germany

See on map

Total cost
No data