The 4th industrial revolution emerged in Germany in 2011 and is now a global innovation paradigm for the manufacturing industry worldwide. Starting from its initial conception of full adoption of Cyber Physical Production Systems, the Industry 4.0 paradigm has extended its scope to a broader set of technologies and to the most vital processes in the product and production systems lifecycle. The terms Industrial Internet of Things, Additive Manufacturing, Robotics, Mass Customisation, Product-Service Systems and Sustainable Manufacturing are key cornerstones and top priority challenges. However, in the context of an increasing demand on the diversity of products, products with shorter life cycles, and low volumes per order, the gap between the leading edge and lagging behind countries risks to become a serious problem, in the absence of a solid and inclusive innovation policy.
In line with the Industry 4.0 paradigm and the EU-Brazil collaboration program, the FASTEN project aims to be a key enabler of the full adoption of IoT technologies in digital manufacturing businesses, by demonstrating such technologies on both sides of the Atlantic. As such, FASTEN “mission” is to develop, demonstrate, validate, and disseminate an integrated and open modular framework (Figure 1) for efficiently producing highly customized products. This ios achieved by pairing digital integrated service/products to additive manufacturing processes, on top of tools for decentralizing decision-making and data interchange. Software technologies are applied to build a fully connected additive manufacturing system by exploiting robotic, automation, simulation, as well as optimization and prescriptive analytics technologies. Demonstration of these technologies were performed in two pilot cases: ThyssenKrupp Elevators in Brazil and Embraer Portugal in Europe (aeronautics).
The specific objectives of FASTEN comprise the following:
-To develop and demonstrate a flexible and scalable robotic system and its integration with mass customisation production lines,
-To design, assemble and demonstrate a Reference Architecture for Industrial IoT and Industrial Analytics made of open source components,
-To develop and demonstrate a real-time application for monitoring the performance of manufacturing and logistics systems, using simulation, optimization and predictive analytical tools,
Strategically, the project aims to foster the digital manufacturing sustainability and be an enabler of technology development between Brazil and Europe, thus contributing to the competitiveness of Brazilian and European industries.
Major results to be delivered are identified in Figure 2.
