Better Factory, a project within the European Union Horizon 2020 framework, brings together key actors in the European technology, art and innovation landscape to provide an integrated innovation framework and a European network to deliver a standardized solution for Manufacturing SMEs to invent and manufacture new and personalized products and create services around them.
Better Factory will provide methodology and opportunities for European Manufacturing SMEs to collaborate with artists and technology suppliers at developing new and personalized products. There will be selected 16 KTE – Knowledge Transfer Experiments. The project will also provide technology for companies to become fully connected cyber-physical systems, transforming them into lean and agile production facilities capable of manufacturing new and personalized products alongside existing products. This will all take places on the RAMP IoT platform. For SMEs to produce batches of new and personalized products requires transforming traditional factories into lean and agile production facilities. Better Factories provides an Open and Standardized Advance Production Planning and Scheduling (APPS) system for manufacturers to test commercial tools to optimize waste, energy, resources and logistic.
The project helps manufacturers to enter new markets with customizable, personalized product or service portfolio and provide a platform to artists and technology suppliers to work towards new business models and solutions. During the project, Better Factory will assign high-skilled Business and Arts experts to analyse the current product / service portfolio with the core knowledge from manufacturers, to redesign customizable products and service portfolios using new digital technologies. This may spark new product designs, business models or services and expands creative frontiers.
The consortium coordinated by VTT (Finland), includes 28 partners from 18 European countries. In4Art is one of them and will research the resources, knowledge and methodologies to involve artists and facilitate the process to remodel the Manufacturing SMEs products, reshape their services and redefine their business models.
Better Factory aims to provide an integrated innovation framework and a European network to deliver a standardized solution for Manufacturing SMEs, artists and technology suppliers to invent and manufacture new and personalized products and create services around them through the RAMP
RAMP (Robotics Automation Marketplace) is a free and open IoT platform (FIWARE) running on state of the art servers, with access to cloud storage and computing, enabling connection with robots, sensors, cameras, AR/VR and other equipment. RAMP will provide 3D simulation tool to create Digital Twin for virtual testing, co-creation space for teams to collaborate online among other digital services.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 951813.