Circular economy meets Industry 4.0: How digital tools can shape the future of sustainable production. The EU project Alicia aims to create a circular economy for production equipment in order to minimize the premature scrapping of machines and machine parts. With the development of five digital tools, industrial companies and the used machinery market will be economically connected, allowing assets to be reused up to 100 percent.
The majority of machine parts in production – such as robot arms or conveyor belts – do not reach their maximum service life and are discarded prematurely. According to estimates, up to 70 percent of production equipment in the automotive industry is taken out of service prematurely, scrapped or at best sold as spare parts. This is not only uneconomical, but also unsustainable. This is a point that needs to be addressed as part of the European Green Deal with the goal of being climate-neutral by 2050.
EU project Alicia creates a circular economy for production lines
If there were a circular economy for means of production, a so-called Circular Manufacturing Ecosystem (CME), money and resources could be saved. Until now, however, there has been no efficient connection between industrial companies on the one hand and between these companies and the used machinery market on the other, so that sellers and buyers can trade in machines and machine parts.
This is now being changed in the EU project Alicia. Alicia stands for Assembly Lines in Circulation. Twelve partners from research and industry are developing various smart, digital tools for the sustainable use of production resources over a period of three years. The project is being coordinated by the Technical University of Munich (TUM). By developing innovative digital tools, the project aims to create efficient economic links between industrial players and the used machinery market. This strategic link enables 100% reuse of assets and thus promotes sustainability and resource optimization. These digital tools create a new type of circular economy – the CME. The goal: In five to ten years, production resources, such as entire production lines, individual machines and spare parts, will be traded and reused among individual factories in Europe until their service life is maximized. The aim of the Alicia online platform is to bring buyers of production resources together with suppliers. It also integrates service providers, such as SMEs that offer remanufacturing services or recycling companies that can offer their services to factory owners. The platform is supported by a range of innovative digital tools that simplify the process of identifying and selecting suitable used assembly equipment for new production lines and enable the integration of this used equipment into modern assembly systems.
Five digital tools complete the CME
A factory owner or plant manager needs a new production plant. With the help of a machine-readable ontology, his requirements for a second-hand system are digitally mapped. In addition to production-related factors, social, economic and environmental aspects are also taken into account. After all, if the employees cannot work with the purchased machine or its remaining service life is not economical, a second-hand purchase makes little sense. By taking a human-centered approach, the project aims to enable the retraining and further training of employees. In addition, the machine-readable ontology aims to ensure that women have equal opportunities to participate in and benefit from the circular economy model. The online marketplace connects the players in the second-hand business. This includes not only buyers and sellers as well as used machinery dealers, but also service providers in the field of reconditioning or recycling. The marketplace is used in the CME both to find a suitable machine for the customer and to offer its written-off equipment to other factories. An existing online marketplace, Market 4.0, will be expanded during the course of the project to include real data from the industrial auction house for used machinery, Surplex. Surplex will act as a hub and facilitate the brokerage process between existing and used factory equipment. In addition to its own database for used equipment, Surplex will provide the know-how for a similar platform for the sale of used equipment, including internal data structures and processes.
An AI matchmaking engine compares the offer on the Marketplace of available factory production machines, other second-hand equipment and machines and potential new machines (to fill the gaps in the assembly line design that cannot be covered by second-hand machines) with the customer’s requirements in the machine-readable ontology. It selects the best combination of resources for the desired assembly line. To convince the factory owner, a Digital Shadow (DS) of the production line matched for him is created. The DS is a model of a future second-hand line. Alicia will push the boundaries of the state of the art by developing a “semi-automated” DS that combines data on available production resources, automatically fed from the Marketplace, with manually entered CAD model data. This digital image of the potential second-hand line simulates the production output by combining the data from the individual machines. Once the real second-hand line has been built, the Digital Shadow is further developed into a Digital Twin (DT). The DT is fed in real time with production data from the machine sensors and other sources. The DT is therefore the virtual image of a real system, for example the production line. Plug & Produce middleware is used to ensure the smooth setup and immediate commissioning of the second-hand line.
Plug-and-produce concepts are based on the idea that each device is equipped with an administration shell. This contains all machine data such as their properties, parameters and interfaces. In Industry 4.0, all production components must be able to communicate with each other without interference. The automatically readable documentation on the administration shell forms the basis for this. As the production plant now consists of a mixture of new and used machines from different manufacturers, the plug & produce middleware creates maximum interoperability.
To protect user data, Alicia will offer both cloud-based and on-premise solutions that give users complete control over the use of their data. The solutions can be installed and operated locally if required.
What does the European industry mean to Alicia?
Production managers can purchase a used production line up to 40 percent faster and at least half the price of a new one. By making maximum use of the machine’s service life, material and energy consumption can be reduced by up to 80 percent compared to a new machine. With the Alicia closed loop, assets can be reused up to 100 percent. In summary, the EU Alicia project is at the forefront of sustainable production, using digital innovation to create a more efficient and environmentally friendly approach to the use of production resources. Through its strategic initiatives and collaborative efforts, Alicia is paving the way for a future in which the principles of the circular economy drive the evolution of the manufacturing industry towards greater sustainability and resource efficiency. In doing so, Alicia is helping to increase the EU’s resilience to disruptions in global supply chains and making a significant contribution to the creation of a circular economy.
About the project
Alicia is funded by the European Union with almost EUR 5.86 million under the project number 101091577 as part of the Horizon program. The project officially began in January 2023 and will run for three years. The twelve project partners are:
– Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management (iwb) at the Technical University of Munich (Germany) (project coordinator)
– Comau S.p.A., Grugliasco (Italy)
– Conti Temic microelectronic GmbH, Ingolstadt (Germany)
– DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V., Berlin (Germany)
– ECI-Mechatronics GmbH, Schwaz (Austria)
– Intrasoft International S.A. (Luxembourg)
– Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT), Palaiseau (France)
– Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation (LMS) at Patras University (Greece)
– MTS Consulting & Engineering GmbH, Fürstenbeck (Germany)
– Surplex Iberica SLU, Barcelona (Spain)
– Institut für Maschinenbau- und Betriebsinformatik (MBI) at Graz University of Technology (Austria)
– Yaghma B.V., Delft (Netherlands) Alicia has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation program under project number 101091577. However, the views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the EU or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). Neither the EU nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Web:
Alicia-cme.eu