Digital & Autonomous Factory

The Digital Transformative & Autonomous Factory Project of the PRODUTECH R3 Mobilizing Agenda focuses on the development of high-performance, autonomous and sustainable production systems, supported by vision and digitalization technologies.

The activities of this "work package" are focused on three main areas:

1. Implementation of Digital and Visual Production Systems: Integration of digital and visual management technologies to improve the monitoring and control of manufacturing operations, enabling more efficient management of resources and minimization of waste.

2. Autonomy of Internal Logistics Systems: Development of adaptive and intelligent logistics solutions that allow the coordination and autonomous movement of materials, indoor and outdoor, contributing to greater efficiency, flexibility and agility in responding to production fluctuations.

3. Autonomous and Sustainable Factories: Implementation of solutions that ensure the optimization of processes and energy consumption, promoting a more sustainable production environment with less environmental impact.

Throughout the project, several tests and demonstrations will be carried out in a real industrial environment, in partnership with demonstrator companies, in order to ensure that the technologies developed are robust, scalable and applicable to diversified production contexts.

The main expected results include the development of new technologies and production methods that promote the digitalization and automation of manufacturing operations, and that, at the same time, contribute to greater sustainability and resilience of industrial companies.

The main results achieved so far are:

- Installation of production management software in the demonstrators, and consequent collection and analysis of data that will be used to feed the optimization tools (which include sustainability logics, Lean, and Multi-Layer Stream Mapping – MSM);

- Iterative development of natural navigation algorithms for electric AGVs with the ability to move large tons of materials, both indoors and outdoors and respective pilot tests;

- Design of a flexible and adaptable system for the management of more than 100 different materials that feed 16 extrusion lines, and start of the respective validation tests, as well as the development and integration of technologies that allow the predictive maintenance of the equipment, based on the data collected during its operation;

- Design of mathematical models to predict the duration of AGV missions, taking into account the various scenarios and obstacles common in the industrial context;

- Creation of a vertical warehouse solution with a picking system using an industrial robot, which contains machine learning algorithms to predict customer orders, automating the goods picking process.

To this automation process, the project combines a Human-Centered analysis with the aim of characterizing the tasks, determining the impacts on employees, and defining a set of requirements to be incorporated into the products and layout in order to optimize the integration of technologies on the factory floor.

Partners involved: CME, JPM, MUVU, Colep Packaging, EuroGalva, PlasOeste, CATIM, INEGI, IST, IPP-ESTG, U.Coimbra.

More information about the project is available at: PRODUTECH R3.

The PRODUTECH R3 project - Mobilizing Agenda for the Production Technologies Sector for Reindustrialization, is funded by the European Union under the NextGeneration EU program through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP - www.recuperarportugal-gov.pt).

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