I4Produktion

Realising the Vision of a Resilient Factory

...through knowledge and assistance systems.

Picture of the I4Production demonstrator at ARENA2036
Contact

Prof. Dr.-Ing., Prof. e.h., MBA Carmen Constantinescu

Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering

Scientific Lead of I4Production

I4Produktion

Realizing the Vision of a Resilient Factory

I4Production aims to realize the vision of the resilient factory through knowledge and assistance systems for intelligent decision making. The resilient factory is the next step in the development of production, where the factory always operates at optimal capacity and utilization.

Implementation of a Cognitive Digital Twin to Enable Resilient Production

The overall goal of I4Production is the seamless connection between people and digital systems in the factory of the future, as well as the synchronization of the digital world with the real world in real time by means of the following developments:

  • People as universal sensors;
  • Intelligent, cooperative and autonomous networking between people and/or production systems;
  • The connection between people and digital twins to share experiences without barriers.

Vision of I4Production

The vision of I4Production is a production floor populated with scalable networks of technical sensors, monitored by 3D laser scanners top-down and bottom-up on primary factory objects (processes, people, machines, tools, parts, etc.), as well as an environment of cognitive digital twins shared and queried by usage-based applications from the factory environment. All these applications are flexibly integrated into the IoT-based infrastructure and demonstrated for real-time monitoring of relevant processes.

Proactive Production

Real-time monitoring of production performance and understanding of its context enables a critical paradigm shift in factory operations from demand-driven requirements and reactive decision making to adaptability, deliberate material flow, and resource fluidity: towards proactive production. This new paradigm for production will be accomplished by incorporating high-performance IoT technologies.

The overall goal of I4Production is to achieve resilient production. I4Production focuses on scientific and technical goals, more specifically: the development and characterization of cognitive digital twins in the factory. The proposed solution is a learning context assistance system for resilient production and continuously integrated feedback loops on product and production level.

The Development of these Outcomes is the Key Focus of the Project

  • A virtual engineering-environment for resilient production
  • A compatible, learning assistance system for resilient production
  • Prototypes and their proof in form of validated demonstrators
  • Economic efficiency as well as concepts and strategies for future production scenarios
  • Implementation strategies and use cases of resilient production

Another important outcome of I4Production is the development and support of an intensive collaboration between research and education across the international project network:
The two projects based in Germany (I4Production and DIREKT) cooperate with the Global Innovation Linkage-project of the Swineburne University in Australia. To strenghten the connection within the international network, an intensive collaboration and exchange will be fostered, especially in terms of holistic digitization and optimization of technical processes towards the direction of production security by means of high-performance digital and IoT technology.