Call for Proposals for IT Applications Experiments

Date de clôture : 15 juin 2016  
APPEL À PROJET CLÔTURÉ

BEinCPPS is funded under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation through the Factories of the Future Call for Proposals (H2020-FoF-2015) addressing the Topic “ICT Innovation for Manufacturing SMEs (I4MS)” (topic identifier: FoF- 09-2015).

BEinCPPS is an Innovation Action that contributes to the following technology area as expressed in the Call work programme: 

Integration of Cyber-Physical-System modules in manufacturing processes and process chains (application or equipment assessment experiments) to increase sophistication and automation in production SMEs and to create novel value added services linked to process surveillance and maintenance 

BEinCPPS is including 5 industrial facilities where experiments will be located and conducted:

1. Lombardia “Washing Machines: Statistical Zero Defect Quality Control system”

2. Euskadi “Plastic Components: Manufacturing Processes for New Automotive Components”

3. Baden Wuerttenberg “Agriculture Technologies: highly personalized cabin manufacturing, final assembly”

4. Norte Portugal “Footwear Manufacturing: High Speed Shoe Factory automation and control”

5. Rhone Alpes “Moulds Manufacturer: high precision moulding”

Other two Smart Factories will be offered to experiments by DFKI (Smart Factory Kaiserslautern) and POLIMI (FoFLab in Milano, starting from January 2017). A short description of the 5+2 BEinCPPS experimental facilities is reported in a separate public document entitled “BEinCPPS experimental facilities” available on line, on beincpps.eu and I4MS.eu in the section dedicated to the open calls.

BeinCPPS Call-1 targets the development of IT application experiments that address advanced added value production process and systems, which incorporate Cyber Physical Systems. The open call aims at complementing existing experiments currently running in the BEinCPPS 5 Industrial Hubs under the 8 categories listed here below. Experimentation datasets as well as open APIs to provide access to the BEinCPPS platform installed in the Industrial facilities will be made available to Open Calls winners for testing and evaluation. In case of need, additional datasets and open APIs could be provided by the Smart Factories experimental facilities in Kaiserslautern (Germany, under DFKI supervision) and in Milano (Italy FoFLab, under POLIMI supervision, but just from January 2017)

1. CPS-based Big Data Analytics for production planning and optimisation. The availability of CPPS at shopfloor level implies the generation of huge amounts of data. New data intensive IT applications can be developed on top of these datasets especially in the field of production management and optimisations. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS Norte / Euskadi industrial champions in the footwear / plastic industries. Experimenters are invited to contact the Innovation Hub coordinator to budget properly these activities.

   1. Norte (Portugal). The HighSpeedShoeFactory comprises two major systems: the Stitching Logistic System, implementing the activities of stitching and pre-assembly, and the Assembly Logistic System, implementing the final assembly and finishing activities of the final product. The HighSpeedShoeFactory constitutes the most recent generation of production system implanted at KYAIA and in the footwear sector. This experiment aims to process historical and near real-time sensor-based data related to the working posts within the High Speed Shoe Factory in order to detect the actual occurrence of physical problems and to estimate their possible occurrence in the near/medium term future. These advanced data analytics will support maintenance actions in the Stitching Logistic System. Technology to adapt and deploy comprises the FIWARE COSMOS and FITMAN DyCEP components. These components will gather data from the NOSQL database and will be hidden by an open service, that will get the results of the data analysis. Access to the HSSF / SmartSL through its API will allow the data analytics service to contextualize the analysis. Besides human workplaces, the High Speed Shoe Factory comprises robotic manipulators and motor based conveyors that require extensive maintenance actions. These physical components have sensors that, by using the approach defined in the previous experiment, will support the maintenance of the entire production system. This is a possible extension of the experiment.

   2. Euskadi (Spain). MAIER produces plastic parts for most of the automotive OEMs based in Europe. They are mainly aesthetic plastic parts with a very high visual and perception performance. MAIER’s core technologies are thermoplastic injection, parts painting and chrome plating, so all the products produced are based on thermoplastic injection molding. The experiment aims at the digitalization of both control fixtures and parts with the objective of cyber-physical simulation of the profile of the car where it is placed, including all the holes and fixtures. The experiment objective is the development of a cyber-physical gauging system based on 3D digitalisation technologies and 3D point cloud analytics to reduce the need of complex physical control fixtures. One of the main issues in high performance plastic components analysis is the classification and characterization of aesthetic aspects in plastic components (orange peels, etc...). The experiment extensions based on big data analytics could address the classification, pattern recognition and defect detection of aesthetic features in plastic components based on the 3D point cloud information and 3D information analysis. The experimenters will have access to data from reference parts but should budget some resources for the use of digitalization equipment made available by the hub and digitalization tasks. 

2. CPS-based Production Process Ramp-up and Commissioning. Thanks to advanced monitoring, diagnosis and simulation IT applications, CPPS technology will also improve the design, prototyping and ramp-up phase for new production plants and systems. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS Euskadi industrial champion in the plastic industry. Experimenters are invited to contact the Innovation Hub coordinator to budget properly these activities. 
   1. Euskadi (Spain). The experiment performed among Trimek, Innovalia, MTC and Maier in the laboratories of Euskadi DIH aim at digitalize the prototyping process in order to support decision and engineering in the factory and improve timing and cost in the ramp up phase. This experiment considers the development of Cyber-Physical equivalents that will allow the development of suitable models and manipulation of critical events and raw data being made available through the Cyber-Physical Gates, into the Cyber production domain.
      Additionally, the Euskadi regional digital manufacturing innovation hub will make available to open call participants different 3D digitalization CPS equipment and BEinCPPS platforms for the development of their experiments. Open call participants are invited to integrate BEinCPPS deterministic Ethernet and Wireless Sensor Network CPPS control modules in shop-floor experiments, aiming to provide a hybrid wired-wireless communication infrastructure that allows real time critical communication and the versatility of deployment of a robust wireless communication network for flexible process monitoring and control. Open call participants could provide innovative applications based on deterministic and wireless sensor monitoring and control combined with BeinCPPS open platform and FIWARE COSMOS and DyCEP technology for the fast (real- time) detection of manufacturing process drifting, maintenance or monitoring events. Participants could also consider the use and application of BEinCPPS Industrial Physical web technologies, as part of advanced human-shop-floor machine interactions.
3. CPS-based Energy Efficient Manufacturing. Resources (e.g. Energy, Water) and Waste management IT applications are enabled by the presence of CPPS in the production systems. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS Smart Factories in Kaiserslautern (DFKI) and Milano (POLIMI available from January 2017).
4. CPS-based Zero Defect Manufacturing. Innovative product quality assessment IT applications are now enabled by CPS-based intelligent metrology and production systems. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS Baden Wuerttenberg and Lombardia industrial champions in the agro machinery and white goods industries. Experimenters are invited to contact the Innovation Hub coordinator to budget properly these activities.
   1. Lombardia (Italy). Statistical Quality Controls still play a crucial role in white good manufacturers industries toward the Zero defect goal, and imply a sophisticated organization in which humans, machines and computers have to cooperate in perfect way. These controls allow to infer potential problems by examining a subset of the production output (2-3%) using a deeper analysis of the product as built. At Whirlpool, statistical quality controls are implemented in the so called Zero Hours Quality department, ZHQ, where workers do deep tests to products sampled in statistical way from production in order to verify features, performances, and other topics typically not verifiable during normal on line test.​​​ZHQ is equipped with a Cyber Physical System (CPS) in order to provide operations a structured, repeatable, flexible and cost effective approach.  The overall objective of this experiment is twofold:
      1. To measure the Quality level of the product in delivery from aesthetic, functional and normative point of view; 
      2. To measure the efficacy of the process control systems, procedures and activities actuated during production. 
   • ZHQ is equipped with a Cyber Physical System (CPS) in order to provide operations a structured, repeatable, flexible and cost effective approach. 
     1. Guided operations: operators are instructed in real time to perform sequence of tasks to check and measure products (Rule Editor)

     2. Programmability: sequence of tests can be programmed by Quality managers using a programming tool (Rule Editor)

     3. Automatic I/O: the product under test is interfaced both in input (actuators) and output (sensors) to automatically change state of product and gather data (Box Handler)

     4. Data management: data are stored and available for immediate or historical analysis (Display Result)

   1. Baden Wuerttenberg (Germany). The use case selected by BW ecosystem's champion (John Deere) is focused on the manual assembly of hydraulic line kits that includes the picking of the parts based on the current order information, the assembly of the parts and providing the assembly for the main assembly line. Because of the high number of varieties as well as the high similarity of parts it is necessary to introduce proactive control applications to reduce defects caused by this process. During the first period of the BEinCPPS project the following sources of error were detected:
      1. Storing the parts at the wrong place
      2. Picking the wrong parts
      3. Doing mistakes during assembly process
   • Reducing defects in this domain is important because the faulty assembly will be attached to the tractor subsequently at the main assembly line and the error will be visible late in the ongoing production sequence in most cases. The later the error is recognized the higher is the debugging effort because it is necessary to do more and more re-assembly work. At the moment, based on internal studies, the financial damage of those errors has been rated medium but with the increasing number of products and configuration it is very important for John Deere to find new ways of handling the complexity of their products. So it is very important to introduce new proactive control applications for a zero defect manufacturing.

5. CPS-based Factory Logistics Management. CPPS play a fundamental role in the factory internal logistics: innovative IT applications need to be developed specifically for planning, scheduling and monitoring raw materials and finite products inside the production system. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS Norte industrial champion in the shoes industry. Experimenters are invited to contact the Innovation Hub coordinator to budget properly these activities.

   1. Norte (Portugal). The HighSpeedShoeFactory Logistic systems are essentially electro- mechanical systems that transport work-in-progress elements within container boxes from work station to work station in the production system. As such, the elements comprising the system (e.g. working posts, motor-based conveyors, robotic manipulators) are subject to mechanical stress that often cause their sensors and actuators to lose their alignment and position in the mechanical structure. As consequence, parts of the logistic system and, in some cases, the entire logistic system, must be stopped to develop maintenance actions on the mechanical structure. However, some of the physical problems may be diagnosed by analysing the stream of values that the sensors are generating. This experiment aims to allow sensor-based data to be stored in a persistent data repository and to be published in the network in near real-time fashion, thus allowing field level data to be accessible at cloud (enterprise) and factory levels. This will be achieved by deploying and adapting a publish subscribe broker and by a NOSQL database. Adapters will be developed to 1) gather sensor-based data from the controlling PLC and 2) to subscribe all sensor-based data and store it in the NOSQL data base. Apache Cassandra, REDIS and RabbitMQ message brokers comprise the major technology to adapt and deploy. In this context, major APIs are the ones of Apache Cassandra, REDIS and RabbitMQ, accompanied by the format of the sensor-based events (published by the message broker) and by the schema of the NOSQL database. 

6. CPS-based Workplace, Training and Human Machine Interaction. Human-centric manufacturing operations are also challenged by the presence of CPS-based automation systems: workplaces need to become more interactive, flexible and agile, while the usage of mobile, wearable devices is encouraged. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS BW industrial champion in the agro-machinery. Experimenters are invited to contact the Innovation Hub coordinator to budget properly these activities.
   1. Baden Wuerttenberg (Germany). Manual work is a key factor of the selected use case. By now, workers are just supported with paper-based work instructions and order information. The effort for creating and maintaining the work instructions is pretty high and subsequently it is not possible to keep the instructions up to date all the time as well as to create work instructions for all of the assembly processes. Consequently, a worker still needs a minimal knowledge level to understand the work instructions correctly. In order to shorten the ramp-up time of new workers and to give a better support for manual work, advanced visualisation technologies have to be used. Those technologies could be introduced at the storage place of parts/assemblies, at the work stations and could be worn by the workers. The goal of introducing those technologies is to support the worker with picking the parts, assembling and putting the assembly at the right place. After collecting and evaluating different ideas the following technologies were found feasible:

      1. Digital picking list shown on smart device (tablet, smartphone, smart glasses)

      2. Using projector to illuminate parts to be picked/show or show work process/result of assembly

      3. Show parts to be picked by pick by light / pick by vision

      4. Display automatic generated step-by-step work instructions on display at the work station

      5. Use augmented reality applications to guide worker along the work process 

7. CPS-based Product Lifecycle and End-of-Life Management. The Cyber and the Physical components of a CPPS artefact are characterised by quite different lifecycles, especially in the End of Life phase where the huge investments in CPPS could be partially recovered. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS Rhone Alpes industrial champion in the moulds industry. Experimenters are invited to contact the Innovation Hub coordinator to budget properly these activities. 

   1. Rhone-Alpes (France). The objective for Pernoud Company through those experiments is to add intelligence on plastic injection mold to transform this mechanical system in a CPS one, with an expectation of improving cost quality and delays of the part produced. To reach this goal we need a feedback from the mold to know what happened during the production. So to access to this information we need to instrument the mold with different embedded devices on it but also to directly have a look on that information any time it could be needed. Our current experimentations are focussing on: 
       

      1. Data acquisition with thermocouple (Category: CPS equipment development): Monitoring environment conditions using a smart system based on the BeagleBone Black platform, and thermocouple sensors. We are also performing experiments driving the electrical actuators which handle the mechanical parts of the mold and performing the data acquisition to be sent on the cloud.

      2. Driving electrical actuators (Category: CPS equipment development): Thanks to the smart system, the movement of the mold can be performed by electrical actuator. Those actuators will be driven by the Beaglebone Black and will offer to us flexibility which cannot be reached with standard hydraulic actuators.

      3. Cloud data monitoring (Category: CPS equipment development): To store the data acquired during the utilization of the smart tool, the smart system is linked to a cloud and this cloud will allow an access to the entire life cycle of the tool from anywhere and at any time. A cloud application implemented as user-interface widget will allow visualizing the real-time data. 

   2. The proposed experiment is about managing mold end of life. When a mold reaches the stage of end-of-life, it is normally recycled as any other piece of steel; however, in the case of the smart mold, it will be equipped with the smart system, which can still be used in another mold. Therefore, a modularity mechanism should be developed which will allow reusing and redeploying the smart system onto another mold. 

8. CPS-based sensors data acquisition and management. The presence of CPPS in production enable the development of smart products-artefacts which could interact with them: advanced sensorised production systems support the development of innovative IT application experiments in the field of production management and optimisation. Applicants can propose their own IT application and experimental facility or rely on BEinCPPS Rhone Alpes industrial champion in the moulds industry. Experimenters are invited to contact the Innovation Hub coordinator to budget properly these activities. 

   1. Rhone-Alpes (France). The objective for Pernoud Company through those experiments is to add intelligence on plastic injection mold to transform this mechanical system in a CPS one, with an expectation of improving cost quality and delays of the part produced. To reach this goal we need a feedback from the mold to know what happened during the production. So to access to this information we need to instrument the mold with different embedded devices on it but also to directly have a look on that information any time it could be needed. In this category we envisage two different experimentations: 

      1. Experimentation with additional types of sensors (Thermoflux and Constraint gauge): Carry out experiments with other types of sensors, which will enrich the environment data acquired by our smart system. This will include sensors less easy to implement like thermoflux, which is used for sensing the injection temperature and pressure sensing or constraint gauge, which are used to analyze and measure distortion. 

      2. Dashboard cloud 3D visualization: Our current experiments will allow us to visualize the real time data of the temperature sensors, the monitored alerts, as well as to mimic the inputs and outputs of the injection machine. However, we would like to experiment with enriching this visualization with a more advanced visualization, including a real- time 3D representation of the smart mold with the real-time conditions, which will provide a visual overview of the different sensors deployed in the mold. 

In the online Open Call management tool, applicants should firstly select one of the 8 categories and then express their preference about supporting existing industrial cases or providing their own industrial facilities and experimental datasets. The participants to the open call will have to position their solutions and the added value of their CPS-based manufacturing applications and processes in the above thematic area.

The open call seeks for teams of CPS-based IT application providers and optionally manufacturing SMEs and mid-caps, which on one hand, contribute to the extension of tools and equipment that support the BeinCPPS blueprint and on the other hand integrate at various levels BeinCPPS advanced CPS assets as part of their advanced manufacturing process solutions.

Priority will be given to experiments driven by the requirements of existing BEinCPPS users that reinforce simultaneously the capabilities of the BeinCPPS ecosystems from technology offer’s and advanced manufacturing experimentation’s perspectives.

The business-relevance of the application experiment is essential, as BeinCPPS places considerable emphasis on exploitation opportunities and integration of CPPS at all levels from field and shopfloor equipment, sensors or control solution providers up to software tool vendors, solution integrators, cloud infrastructure providers and manufacturing process engineering companies.

Experiments should also consider how they can apply BeinCPPS architecture components and modelling tools; develop CPPS services and products compliant with the BeinCPPS architecture, which can subsequently be used by other end-users. A Public version of Deliverable D2.1 BEinCPPS architecture will be also available for consultation and downloading.

In the context of the 5 Digital Innovation Hubs, the expected business impact and commercial exploitation possibilities of the targeted results should be explained and substantiated by market figures (target markets, market sizes, competitors, competing solutions, ...). The alignment of the proposed experiments with the objectives of BeinCPPS Call-1 should be explained.

The core objective of BEinCPPS is to dramatically improve the adoption of CPPSs all over Europe by means of the creation, nurturing and flourishing of CPS-driven regional innovation ecosystems, made of competence centers, manufacturing enterprises and IT SMEs. There is also a need for breaking the silos between Future Internet, Internet of Things and Cyber Physical Systems architectures and platforms, development environments, delivery and business models, so that seamless interoperability at various levels based on open standards and solutions could lower the entry barriers to the market by SMEs and minimize the risk of vendors’ lock-in. BEinCPPS aims at increasing the interaction between existing ecosystems within Europe (CPS, Factories of the Future, Future Internet, IoT) and fostering the emergence of new CPPS products for the manufacturing domain. 

EinCPPS will organise a second call for proposal for additional equipment assessment experiments.

Call 1, covered by this document, addresses IT application experiments executing for a 12-month period commencing in October 2016. “Call-2” is expected to be launched in November 2016, leading to another set of 15-month-long experiments starting in April 2017.

The additional experiments from Call-2 are equipment assessment experiments, the extended platform will be instantiated and deployed in at least 10 additional manufacturing SMEs facilities, via equipment experiments’ projects, which will replicate tests and experimentations in very different locations, sectors and application domains.

Expectations for the new experiments

As discussed above, BEinCPPS Call-1 targets the augmentation of the current set of application developers and additional experiments.

The expectations for the proposed experiments are that they should:

• be complementary to those already included in BEinCPPS

• contain all those actors in the value chain necessary for the realisation of services meeting the end-users’ engineering and manufacturing needs, and

• be inspired by our 5+2 industrial and experimental facilities

• use datasets and open APIs made available by BEinCPPS industrial cases and IT platform

Proposal submission

Detailed instructions for proposal submission, together with information about the evaluation criteria to be applied, are provided online on http://www.beincpps.eu/index.php?id=429 and on www.i4ms.eu. A direct link to the proper section is hosted on the homepage.

BEinCPPS will make use of the new H2020 Third Parties method to enable the inclusion of new experiment partners. The indicative funding budget for Third Parties for BEinCPPS Call-1 is 800,000€

The funding of Third Parties must follow the same principles as used for existing project beneficiaries of BEinCPPS, which receives European Commission funding as an “Innovation Action”. Thus, Third Parties will receive 70% funding of eligible costs arising (except for non- profit organisations which receive 100% funding).

The funding for an individual experiment may not exceed 80,000 € (covering all participants, both 3rd Parties and existing BEinCPPS beneficiaries). Proposers should consider their actual needs and not mandatorily target this upper limit of funding. The evaluation will take into account the appropriateness of the requested resources. 

Erroneous budget data included in accepted proposals will not result in final corrected budgets that exceed the upper requested limit for funding of the experiment as a whole or of individual participants: BEinCPPS reserves the right to make the appropriate and necessary effort and budget cuts.