DIGITbrain

Context

DIGITbrain is a H2020 project comprising of 36 partners across Europe with Fraunhofer as the technical lead. The project has been awarded €8.3 million in funding for a total value of €9.4 million. The project will run for 42 months from July 2020. The purpose of the project is to create Digital twins that will bring agility and innovation to manufacturing SMEs, by empowering a network of DIHs with an integrated digital platform that enables Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS). IMR’s role in the project is that of leading one of the first experiments entitled; ‘Digital Twin for Additive Manufacturing (AM) ensuring compliance across multiple machines’ and also as a task leader with respect to business coaching and the exploitation of the DIH network.

Aim

The DIGITbrain project aims to enable customised industrial products and to facilitate cost-effective distributed and localised production for manufacturing SMEs, by means of leveraging edge-, cloud- and HPC-based modeling, simulation, optimisation, analytics, and machine learning tools and by means of augmenting the concept of digital twin with a memorising capacity towards a) recording the provenance and boosting the cognition of the industrial product over its full lifecycle, and b) empowering the network of DIHs to implement the smart business model “Manufacturing as a Service”

Challenge

The challenge is to accelerate the design, development and uptake of advanced digital technologies by European industry – especially SMEs and mid-caps –, notably in sectors where digital technologies are underexploited. SMEs and mid-caps in the manufacturing sector need support in the use of secure digital technologies in their production processes, products and business models to enable personalised products and to facilitate cost-effective small-scale production.

DIGITbrain targets the development of advanced digital technologies (DIGITbrain solution) and their integration in the manufacturing sector, with a clear focus on SMEs and mid-caps, where the adoption of this kind of technologies is still below 10%. DIGITbrain activities include a dedicated technology evangelisation program and specific business training, both for manufacturing enterprises and DIHs. Essentially, the DIGITbrain solution aims to facilitate cost-effective distributed and localised production, accelerating the adaptation of manufacturing and products to changing conditions, enhancing manufacturing flexibility and strengthen competitiveness. Utilising the memorising capabilities of the Digital Brain, production can be specifically tailored to local requirements and conditions, paving the way for MaaS that facilitates personalised products and cost-effective small-scale production.

Experimental Open calls

The project has two waves of open calls from the second year onward, these are opportunities for SME’s in Ireland to get involved in digitising their existing equipment with the ambition to create a Digital Twin that will allow them to gain deep insights into their process and participate in the growing MaaS movement.

The IMR Experiment

IMR’s experiment is based around the development of a Digital Twin for existing Additive Manufacturing technologies, the machine that will be used for this is that of our own Renishaw 500M and that of our partners, 3d Medlab, based in France. We will be leveraging various data streams from on board machine sensors and machines state of the art in-process monitoring system.

Project Partners

DIGITbrain Open Call

The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement N°952071.