Smart Manufacturing

Digital innovation invites manufacturers to fundamentally rethink their products and processes – as it opens the door to product optimization, increased efficiency, competitive advantages and (ultimately) cost-savings and higher profit margins. As such, digital innovation is one of the main drivers behind the so-called ‘factory of the future’.

Today’s manufacturing and digital innovation go hand in hand.

Some example projects:

• MoniCow - Monitoring and localisation of animals: focus on Cows (iMinds ICON project, 2015-2017)

MoniCow develops an automated data system for animal monitoring and localization, by focusing on real-time, advanced health parameters and energy efficiency. The techno-economic work focuses on the business case for the system as a whole and the cost-benefit analysis of using such a data system for the farmer.

• SENCOM - Smart Energy Consumption in Manufacturing (iMinds ICON project, 2014-2015)

SENCOM develops a new energy-aware scheduling technology for manufacturing processes, and applies it in practice on a blow moulding production plant. The techno-economic work consists of drawing a complete cost breakdown for this production plant, both qualitatively and quantitatively and indicate the saving potentials of the new scheduling technology.

• COMACOD - Control and Management of Constrained Devices (iMinds ICON project, 2013-2014)

The Comacod project investigated how various sensors that are part of three different use cases (garbage bin monitoring, fleet management and container & crane monitoring) can enable the same services – using a single service back-end platform and the (open standard) constrained CoAP protocol for data communication. A techno-economic study further explored the potential economic value of smart containers.

• MOCO - Monitoring of Containers (iMinds ICON project, 2010-2012)

MoCo proposes to develop a cheap generic connectivity solution based on IEEE 802.15.4 sensor technology for communication between 3D stacked containers and supply chain management servers via communication gateways. The techno-economic work focuses on (i) the development of a cost model for installing and operating a wireless sensor network in a container environment, (ii) investigation of the optimal industrialization process of the needed components, e.g. production in law-wage countries will reduce the labour costs, but will lead to an increase in transport and customs costs, and (iii) the establishment of a business model that will convince stakeholders to do the necessary investments.