Periodic Reporting for period 1 - STARGATE (THE BRIDGE BETWEEN MACHINES AND SOFTWARE SYSTEMS FOR SMART INDUSTRIAL OPERATION)
Reporting period: 2018-11-01 to 2019-02-28
Industry 4.0 techniques allow acquiring critical information from the machines, automating the production process, watching for signs of impending failures, identifying when tools are near the end of their useful lives and automatically alerting maintenance personnel. This in turn should allow avoiding downtime on critical machines, and therefore, translating intelligent data usage into savings in the production process.
Our mission at ECI Manufacturing is to help European companies complete their path towards Industry 4.0 with STARGATE, our single gateway middleware between the machines and the software systems used at production plants to control manufacture and effectively manage machine tool data.
Our mission at ECI Manufacturing is to help European companies complete their path towards Industry 4.0 with STARGATE, our single gateway middleware between the machines and the software systems used at production plants to control manufacture and effectively manage machine tool data.
We have carried out a four-month long study in order to confirm the feasibility of STARGATE. From a technical point of view, we have defined the technical testing and validation stages for adapting the connector module, add new collectors for machines not yet integrated and analysis module from the SW to the tool machines. We have elaborated a complete Execution Plan with a risk analysis and mitigation measures. Commercially, we have performed an analysis of our target market and also consolidate our dissemination and commercial strategy. Furthermore, we have updated our Freedom-to-Operate. On the business side, financial forecasts, based on conservative business model strategy and price policy, have been drafted to evaluate on a 5-year-projection.
The EU manufacturing sector accounts for 2 million companies and 33 million direct jobs and 60 million indirect jobs; it is the source of 15% of our GDP, 80% of our exports and generates a turnover of €7 trillion. Our Project STARGATE will contribute to increase the competitiveness of EU CNC manufacturing industry in a key moment where the compelling need for optimizing production lines forces companies to cut down operational costs and pushes to implement automated production plants and smart manufacturing solutions.