ARENA2036-X

On July 4, 2023, the ARENA2036-X project meeting took place at ARENA2036 and marked an important milestone for the project. The aim was to present the results of the initialization phase so far and to plan the next steps for the start of phase 1. The focus was on the technological infrastructure, other cross-cutting topics (enablers) and, above all, the designated use cases.

The response was pleasing: with almost 40 participants, it was fuller than expected and the feedback was very positive. One thing is already foreseeable: This initiative will combine technology and business. The technology will become "tangible", the added value for the individual use cases will become concrete. This could result in MVPs, which - if everything goes well - will open up real business potential.  

All participants can use the infrastructure and develop various real use cases on it. During the event, concrete plans were made for the following areas:  

• The "Showcase Factory Orchestration" use case deals with the networking of production processes to optimize production.
• Dhe sustainability projecte "EcoReporting" and "Digital building twin as a common data platform" investigateen the use of digital twins in cross-company networks in building management (BIM) to optimize the energy balance.
• A particular focus was on cooperation with SmartFactory Kaiserslautern for quality assurance in distributed production facilities. 
• The security demonstrator, a testbed for testing guidelines and security measures for the Eclipse Data Space Connector (EDC) and the Asset Administration Shell received special attention.

All use cases share the infrastructure and therefore also the costs. "Shared benefit, shared effort" - that is the main reason why it is worth participating in ARENA2036-X, emphasized research coordinators Georg Schnauffer and Johannes Diemer from ARENA2036. They emphasized that the added value comes from interoperability across company boundaries and that collaboration is essential for such ecosystem innovations. This is exactly what ARENA2036 stands for.  

The presentations were followed by several parallel working sessions in which ideas for new topics and extensions were generated.  

We would like to thank all participants for their valuable contributions and are confident that the collaboration will successfully move into phase 1 in the fall.  

The invitation and agenda for the event can be viewed below.