Digital intelligence for collaborative ENergy management in Manufacturing

Project Information

DENiM

Grant agreement ID: 958339

DOI

10.3030/958339

Project closed

EC signature date 7 August 2020

Start date 1 November 2020

End date 31 October 2024

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Advanced manufacturing and processing

Total cost

€ 11 007 262,30

EU contribution

€ 9 685 107,99

Coordinated by

MUNSTER TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DENiM (Digital intelligence for collaborative ENergy management in Manufacturing)

Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2024-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The DENiM project will provide a novel technological solution to support industry leverage advanced digital technologies to manage resources and processes more effectively and ensure energy efficiency is an integral part of the manufacturing decision processes. Digital technologies will play a significant role by providing the ability to automatically monitor and optimise energy usage, while also informing users on the environmental and economic impact of decisions made at all stages of the manufacturing process. At the core of the DENiM project is close collaboration with industrial partners who represent the key stakeholders in evaluating the solutions across four complex industrial sectors. These pilots will validate the applicability of key enabling digital technologies as a solution for effective energy management, contributing to best practices that can maximise impact across the EU manufacturing landscape. The project will further demonstrate leadership in both the uptake of digital technologies and sustainable manufacturing that can be replicated across other energy-intensive sectors.
The DENiM project views education, awareness and upskilling as an essential component to allow all workers understand their collective responsibility in addressing energy efficiency. In order to achieve significant energy savings DENiM will provide the ability to collect, analyse, and communicate in real-time, data that can be used to optimise the performance and resource consumption at machine, process and factory level. In addition decision support systems will incorporate energy consumption as a key criteria across all levels of decision making within an organisation. DENiM will develop an interoperable digital intelligence platform enabling a holistic approach to industrial energy management.
The outcome of DENiM will be an integrated toolchain to provision advanced digital services including secure edge connectivity leveraging IoT, data analytics, digital twin, energy modelling and automation culminating in the delivery of continuous energy impact assessment, together with energy control and optimisation across existing production facilities, processes, and machines.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The key achievements of the project to date include:
- Continuous monitoring of the European legal framework and support that impacts DENiM implementation, provision of DENiM ethical, legal and data management framework and Data Management Plan.
- Investigation of the current best practices relating to sustainable manufacturing, definition of DENiM archetype specifications and DENiM sustainability KPIs, design of the digital maturity tool, of the DENiM reference architecture and initial semantic model.
- Successful design development, deployment and validation of the DENiM core functional blocks that realise the DENiM reference architecture.
- Definition of digitalisation strategy, testing of data quality component , development of first version and enhanced of models for energy performance prediction and process analysis across four pilot cases, first version of online LCA and LCC tools applied in the context of the DENiM pilots.
- Implementation of the DENiM decision support tools, including services that supports sustainable production planning, fault detection and diagnosis for asset management, integration of renewable energy into production processes, energy labelling to assess and monitor impact of a manufacturing process\product and enhanced visualisation tools for the deployment of digital twin and energy analytic services
- The first fully integrated prototype of the DENiM digital intelligence platform, bringing together edge connectivity, big data management, data analytics services, DENiM model integration and enterprise services for energy management.
- Comprehensive pilot site analysis and understanding of the requirements to support the pilot use case scenario specification, pilot site digitalisation strategy and the DENiM architecture deployment strategy.
- Deployment and evaluation of the DENiM solution in the context of the four DENiM pilot sectors and scenarios
- Analysis and specification of the first DENiM business model encapsulating the key exploitable results and strategy for exploitation.
- Engagement with broader community of stakeholders including manufacturers, system integrators, energy service companies and research community

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DENiM have successfully developed a holistic approach to maximising the opportunities for advanced digital technologies in supporting effective energy management in complex manufacturing sites and processes. This is achieved by providing an energy efficiency pathway that allows organizations to bridge the gap between implementation of energy aware production services and deployment of advanced digital tools. This is supported through an assessment of digital maturity, including ability to integrate energy as a key input to decision making and skills assessments and training to ensure the workforce is able to take advantage of these innovative services.

DENiM have overcome existing barriers faced by manufacturers in terms of managing energy efficiency through:
i) The collection, aggregation, processing and use of performance related data sets. Through the provision of secure data connectors deployed at the edge, DENiM enables seamless and reliable data collect from the shop floor that can be processed and transformed as inputs for managing energy.
ii) provided new methodologies and support for the development, deployment and integration of performance modelling and assessment with existing business processes and procedures
iii) providing advanced decision support tools that allow manufacturers to easily derive insight from energy performance data to support continuous improvement and ensure sustainable efficiencies across complex manufacturing processes.
iv) ease the management and deployment of advanced services and tools through an integrated modular platform that leverages a common information model, standardised application programming interfaces and containerization for scalable service management.


The project has demonstrated replication of the solution across four complex pilot sites with varying constraints, requirements and user needs. The modular approach of the DENiM architecture allows for flexibility and scalability of solutions for energy efficient management of manufacturing systems.

The impact of the DENiM project includes:
- Significant reduction of energy, cost and waste and optimisation of resource usage through digital enablement as demonstrated in the pilot sectors of the DENiM project
- The development of standardised European energy-efficient best practices to overcome the barriers limiting their application in the manufacturing sectors through guidance, training, support evidenced in the context of DENiM pilots
- Technical advancements as described above, contributing to the current scientific challenges related to the data management, data sharing and security in industrial, cross-sector contexts
- Support securing EU competitiveness in the manufacturing sector through advancing digitalisation in the industrial domain. In addition, support the creation of a skilled workforce able to interact across many facets of manufacturing process using digital technologies
- Maximise awareness of the opportunities for digital tools to support energy efficient management of manufacturing systems

DENiM Platform

DENiM Innovation Pillars