Grow your manufacturing business

During last century, the investments in automation focused on optimising resources and costs and converging towards ever more Lean Production. However, as the manufacturing value‐chains started to go global and complex,
Lean Production cannot react swiftly to market volatilities. These volatilities stems from factors like geopolitical changes, disruption of supply chains, emergence of new technologies, shorter product lifecycle, and are further
compounded by increasing customer demands for personalization and customization. To swiftly react to these volatilities, manufacturers started to look for more agility in their factories. In last decades, a significant public and private investment has been made in the development of several enabling technologies for Agile Production.
Many large manufacturers have successfully implemented these technologies to hit an optimal combination of Lean‐Agile Production. Today, many products1 can be personalized to the very last detail for individual customers
on the same production line with no impact on the production cost. However, for Manufacturing SMEs to adopt optimal Lean‐Agile Production and enter the market with new or personalized product and services, they face several challenges.

Better Factory answers to 4 challenges:
#1: Creativity Challenge - Before adopting new business models and investing into factories for new or personalized products, SMEs need to reinvent their products for customization, around the core value proposition of the product and around the core knowledge of the SME.
#2: Lean-Agile Challenge - To produce batches of new and personalized products, alongside existing products SMEs will require more from their factories. Factories will need to operate as fully connected Lean‐Agile cyber‐physical‐systems, minimizing the use of resources, and simultaneously reconfiguring Human‐Robot‐Interaction while keeping the constraints on quality, delivery, time, etc.
#3: Investment Challenge - Arts drive science and science drive arts and a combination of these drive innovation. The artists can spur new innovations on the path to digital transformation with manufacturing SMEs, as well as explore new horizons with Technology suppliers. Yet, full exploitation of these unpredictable innovations will rely on the access to finance.
#4: Skills Challenge - Transformation process of a conventional factory requires transformation of organisational design and enterprise architecture that embrace convergence of multiple advance technologies. This requires strategic thinking, simulation, planning and re‐skilling.

Better Factory invites Small and Medium-sized Manufacturers (SMEs) to redesign their current product portfolio together with Business and Arts mentors and Technology experts. Manufacturers can tap into disruptive product innovation that responds to new market demands while keeping production resources optimal with RAMP IoT platform. It helps manufacturers to enter new markets with customizable, personalized product or service portfolio. Together with Business and Arts Mentors and technology partners, manufacturers can discover new business models and digitalise their factories to match the production of new or personalized products. During the project, Better Factory will assign high-skilled Business and Arts experts to analyse the current product / service portfolio with the core knowledge from manufacturers, to redesign customizable products and service portfolios using new digital technologies. This may spark new product designs, business models or brands.

For SMEs to produce batches of new and personalized products requires transforming traditional factories into lean and agile production facilities. Better Factories provides an Open and Standardized Advance Production Planning and Scheduling (APPS) system for manufacturers to test commercial tools to optimize waste, energy, resources and logistic.

RAMP (Robotics Automation Marketplace) is a free and open IoT platform (FIWARE) running on state of the art servers, with access to cloud storage and computing, enabling connection with robots, sensors, cameras, AR/VR and other equipment. RAMP will provide 3D simulation tool to create Digital Twin for virtual testing, co-creation space for teams to collaborate online among other digital services.

Main outcomes of the first reporting period
- The first Open Call was launched on January 2021. The process included matchmaking of SMEs, Technology providers and Artists. 7 Knowledge transfer experiments were chosen from altogether 194 individual partners and 38 actual proposals submitted (from which 60,7% went though the matchmaking process).
- First versions of APPS were published
- New version of RAMP Marketplace was launched

Main outcomes of the second reporting period
- first round of KTEs was finished in March 2023
- The RAMP, the APPSs and the KTE management process were up-dated based on feedback from the first round of KTEs
- The second Open Call was launched in 25.04.2022. The process included matchmaking of SMEs, Technology providers and Artists. 9 Knowledge transfer experiments were chosen from altogether 52 eligible proposals submitted. The nine KTE prepared their Individual Mentoring Plans.

Better Factory creates results beyond the state of the art by utilizing and further developing the RAMP platform and IoT platform that was originally created in the project L4MS. The work continued in the projects DIH² and SHOP4CF and now it is continuing in Better Factory. Sustainable way of continuously developing a Marketplace in a series of projects is a novel way of understanding the sustainability of technology and business.

The Innovation process implemented in the Better Factory network of Competence Centres, will be replicated by the members of the RAMP network in every corner of Europe through common dissemination point. RAMP creates the multiplier effect and carries the results beyond the project.

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Better Factory (Grow your manufacturing business)

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