Road4FAME recently onboarded two new industry partners as consortium members, which are now officially endorsed by the European Commission.
ATOS Spain will support the project’s main roadmapping process. ATOS marks 25 year of experience participating in EU projects and is ranked in the top ten global IT services providers and the number one European player. Having acquired deep technology expertise and industry knowledge, the firm brings particular expertise to Road4FAME in ICT manufacturing product-service systems and interoperability.
THHINK Wireless Technology Ltd. will support the project in developing business models. The company was founded in 2009 after more than a decade of R&D in wireless and energy harvesting technologies. THHINK is a leader in the development of innovative new products for strategic monitoring of remote assets, equipment and environments in the aerospace, marine, automotive, rail, automation and agricultural sectors. THHINK engineers have many years of experience providing proof-of-concept research, business case trade studies and products for Formula 1 Racing, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, NASA, the Olympics and the MoD.
The Road4FAME coordination team is very much looking forward to work with these two excellent partners.
First Roadmapping Workshop concluded successfully
We are happy to report that our first roadmapping workshop has been concluded successfully in Porto on May 23rd, kindly hosted by Road4FAME partner Critical Manufacturing S.A. 18 members of the Road4FAME Experts Group worked through an intense day to develop a first version of the Road4FAME roadmap.
As a starting point, a large amount of content was presented to the experts: Firstly, an overview of challenges faced in the manufacturing domain, as well as the underlying trends by which they are caused (“pull perspective”). Secondly, an overview of current and future research themes (“push perspective”). Experts were faced with the challenge to scrutinize this content for missing aspects and to identify the key issues which deserve particular attention.
Four manufacturing scenarios were explored in detail, among them sustainable/green manufacturing, or the virtual enterprise. Key manufacturing IT challenges that were identified in several scenarios independently were subsequently examined in detail.
We would like to thank all participating experts for their input and are excited to turn all the valuable material into a first Road4FAME roadmap.
Interviews with industry representatives concluded successfully at Industrial Automation Fair in Hannover
It is the purpose of the Road4FAME roadmap to align future research with the specific needs and requirements of European manufacturing businesses. To gain a detailed picture of these needs, Road4FAME consortium members conducted a series of interviews with experts from industry at the Industrial Automation fair which took place in Hannover from April 7-11.
In personal interviews of about 15-30 min duration each, representatives from manufacturing companies as well as solution providers (IT vendors, integrators, etc.) kindly provided their perspectives on the most urgently required IT functionalities of manufacturing companies and anticipated requirement changes in the future.
Interviews were conducted in cooperation with the SmartFactory initiative, which also showcased an impressive example of a future production line and received strong interest by visitors and industry representatives.
(In the picture, from left to right: Dr Jürgen Grotepass of DFKI/Smart Factory initiative, coordinator of a German national Industry-4.0 project; Christian Albrecht of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, coordinator of Road4FAME; Ursula Rauschecker of Fraunhofer IPA, project partner in Road4FAME; Rüdiger Dabelow of DFKI, Managing director of Smart Factory initiative.)
FoF- Impact Workshop in Brussels
On March 24-25, representatives of over 150 Factories of the Future (FoF) projects joined the 2014 Impact Workshop of the FoF-PPP. The purpose of the workshop was to identify common themes, potential synergies, and to strengthen cooperation among projects. The workshop was structured on the basis of a clustering of projects into six themes, based upon the ‘Factories of the Future’ roadmap.
Road4FAME was represented in the session ‘Cyber-physical Systems & Networked Factories’. Ursula Rauschecker of Fraunhofer IPA, Germany, presented Road4FAME and its mechanisms to achieve involvement of a large number of stakeholders in the roadmap development process, namely the Road4FAME Core Group and the Road4FAME Experts Group. Ursula also gave an overview of the roadmapping ecosystem in the FoF PPP and described the close interactions of Road4FAME with past and ongoing initiatives such as the ActionPlanT project, EFFRA and the Pathfinder project. The Road4FAME presentation from the session is available here.
First Road4FAME Expert Workshop concluded successfully
In order to support the preparation of the roadmap, 22 members of the Road4FAME Experts Group from industry and academia from across Europe came together on March 6, 2014 in Brussels for a full-day expert workshop.
Motivation for joining this first workshop was impressively high underlining the relevance and importance of the topics discussed. The workshop’s main objective was to establish a comprehensive overview of the most urgently required IT capabilities in the manufacturing domain, research challenges in manufacturing IT as well as IT enablers. Furthermore, four manufacturing scenarios to be considered in Road4FAME were presented and jointly refined in discussions among Road4FAME consortium members and the participating experts.
The objectives of this first workshop were met thanks to the very active contribution of all participants. According to the feedback received post workshop, participants considered the workshop worthwhile and its outputs positive. In an anonymous post-workshop survey, 93% of respondents rated the workshop as very good or excellent.
Figure 1: Linkage of required IT capabilities with research themes
First Road4FAME Experts Group Workshop in Brussels
The first Road4FAME workshop will take place in Brussels on March 6, 2014, involving about 20 members of the Road4FAME Experts Group. The objective of the workshop is to establish a comprehensive overview of R&D challenges in manufacturing IT, based on an elaboration of the most pressing needs and requirements that manufacturing IT will have to respond to. Lastly, a set of future scenarios for manufacturing IT are to be discussed to serve as guiding images in the upcoming roadmapping process.
Road4FAME Consortium Meeting in Milan
Road4FAME presented at major CPS conference in Brussels
The objectives, activities and methodology of the Road4FAME project were presented at the European Commission’s strategic conference on Cyber-Physical Systems: Uplifting Europe’s innovation capacity, which took place in Brussels from 29-30 October 2013.
The two-day conference was co-organized by DG CONNECT of the European Commission and Road4FAME coordinator Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, featured by ARTEMIS, the embedded systems industry association. It brought together highly qualified experts from the embedded systems and cyber-physical systems community in order to discuss their current and future research agendas. Likewise it presented a great opportunity for innovators and industry to assess the current standing of technological progress in manufacturing IT.
Manufuture in Vilnius, Lithuania
An inspiring and well-participated Manufuture 2013 Conference has come to an end. To Road4FAME, the conference was an excellent opportunity to get an overview of emerging trends and ongoing research efforts in manufacturing IT. Also, we were able to meet participants with highly relevant expertise for Road4FAME.
We much appreciated the interest of manufacturing IT experts to join and contribute to Road4FAME and are happy to report a steep increase in members of our Road4FAME Experts Group subsequent to the conference.
Transfer Meeting with ActionPlanT project at Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart, Germany
An important starting point in the development of a roadmap is the establishment of an overview of existing strategic documents. For Road4FAME, one of the most important strategic documents in this regard is the research agenda put forward by the ActionPlanT project. On October 1st 2013, members of the Road4FAME project met for a full-day workshop with members of the ActionPlanT project to discuss their research agenda in detail and to get their guidance for taking up the ActionPlanT results appropriately in Road4FAME.
The consortium is thankful for the strong support received from ActionPlanT coordinator Anirban Majumdar of SAP, Marc Soignet from Platte Consult, and Sonja Pajkovska-Goceva from Fraunhofer IPK. The ActionPlanT strategic research agenda will serve as a solid starting point for our roadmap development in Road4FAME and we look forward to continuing regular consultation with members of the ActionPlanT project by means of the Road4FAME Core Group.