From the technological point of view, the way the QU4LITY project is expected to contribute to the key challenges of current ZDM and QM scenario (and especially the adoption of AI and new cognitive aspects for quality management in the Industry4.0 context) have been driving many technological discussions and activities. In today’s competitive global environment, businesses need to be agile, flexible, resilient, and possess dynamic capabilities, being able to apply advanced quality control processes and closing the loop between data, manufacturing processes and humans in several layer of the automation pyramid. In this context, the advent of advanced digital solutions for ZDM, as the ones developed within QU4LITY, makes it possible for manufacturing companies (both large enterprises and SMEs) to completely innovate the concept of quality control in order to eliminative defects, maximize productivity and decrease scrap. To this end the QU4LITY solutions are equipped with several key enabling digital technologies (e.g. smart sensors, enhanced equipment, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, Augmented Reality, cybersecurity, and many others) that can optimize all aspects of manufacturing processes namely production yield, speed and cost. Most of the technological developments have been concluded within the past Reporting Period, while in this last period the activities have been focused more on evaluation and exploitation (mainly within the scope of the Digital Factory Alliance). To support this final stage, more restricted and public events have been organized by QU4LITY in collaboration with the DFA, to keep creating awareness on the research results, the business cases where they have been demonstrated, and their market potential. Maturity, adoption and upscale have been considered for all the technologies developed within QU4LITY, at both single component level and as a set of integrated digital solutions, from the shopfloor automation and equipment, to the underlying sovereign digital infrastructures, toward an integrated set of interoperable end-to-end solutions, ready for being certified/validated/exploited even beyond the project end.
From the business perspective,following the creation of the DFA in 2021, the programme of deep dives and open dialogues has continued, in support of the creation of a community of users. The operation of the DFA has been consolidated with the incomes derived from the first-year fees of members and founders. The service offering of the DFA is structured into the open digital innovation space (public) and the market driven innovation space (only for members). Within the latter, the Zero-X marketplace has been finalised and filled with the first batch of solutions. The marketplace and the innovation catalogue are now ready to be released and promoted as building blocks of the DFA for the wider community. There is interest by several pilot users to exploit the results involved in their activity after the project.
