Steinbeis experts and European partners implement innovations for welding systems
Manufacturing is a pillar of innovation and growth for Europe, but outdated machinery and unplanned downtime can cause significant losses. The EU project RECLAIM provided strategies to accelerate the deployment of digital technologies in manufacturing and the establishment of a circular economy. A group of researchers and industrial enterprises from nine countries, including Harms & Wende GmbH & Co. KG and Steinbeis Europa Zentrum, joined forces to strengthen the productivity and competitiveness of manufacturing industry and reduce the obsolescence of industrial equipment through new recycling and reuse methods. The project received €13 million of funding from the EU.
The EU project RECLAIM aimed to move manufacturing industry away from the traditional production chain model and towards a more circular approach. Its main focus was on manufacturing companies with ageing machinery, where unplanned downtime and failures can cause significant losses due to the repair and maintenance work required. By giving legacy machines a digital upgrade, the project aimed to extend their lifetime, preventing disruption and production stoppages and improving energy and material footprints. Completely new circular business models were also explored.
The project partners focused on harnessing digital analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and circular economy strategies to improve maintenance and upgrade legacy machines. Harms & Wende is one of five pilot sites where RECLAIM trialed solutions in different sectors including welding, wood manufacturing , textiles, robotics, white goods and shoe making industry , before offering them to a wider range of potential customers.
Health check for welding systems
Harms & Wende GmbH & Co. KG worked with 21 partner organizations in nine countries to develop an “Intelligent Health Management Toolkit” comprising sensors and software that monitor welding equipment performance. As well as providing a health check that analyzes the machine’s current condition, the toolkit also makes it possible to produce forecasts that enable more efficient equipment utilization.
A fundamental component of the overall project, the toolkit requires very little explanation. Outdated, analog machines are given a digital upgrade in the shape of a sensor package that captures key parameters such as operating temperature. The data obtained is fed into various algorithms and analyzed for patterns/irregularities. Based on these analyses, predictions can be made about potential failures so that appropriate maintenance and repair windows can be scheduled before they occur. This significantly reduces the number of unforeseen failures.
The interactive user platform that forms the key output of the RECLAIM project goes one step further. It presents the analyses in a user-friendly manner and also provides cost-benefit analyses of the different lifetime extension strategies, based on the actual cost of the equipment/components. This makes it much easier for plant operators to choose the right strategy.
Professional support from Steinbeis experts
Steinbeis Europa Zentrum played a key role in the concept development phase following the project’s approval, ensuring a smooth project launch. It worked with the project partners to systematically establish and precisely describe the project outcomes and resulting innovations. Particular emphasis was placed on defining their intended uses and the associated intellectual property and access rights together with the partners.
Steinbeis Europa Zentrum and the consortium picked out the most promising project results and provided them with targeted support for a successful market launch. The Steinbeis experts thus offered reliable assistance to consortium coordinator Harms & Wende throughout the project’s duration. Innovation management and “exploitation of research results” are a key pillar of European research and innovation projects. Steinbeis Europa Zentrum contributes to the success of various EU projects in which it is a partner by assuming responsibility for these aspects. As an expert, moderator and catalyst for innovation, Steinbeis Europa Zentrum helps the project consortia to protect their intellectual property, gain access to the relevant markets, and exploit, disseminate and communicate the research results during the project.
Technology transfer adds value in other industrial sectors
While consortium coordinator Harms & Wende specializes in welding, Steinbeis Europa Zentrum also provided assistance in using the toolkit to some of the partners who were exploiting the research results in the wood manufacturing shoe making industry , textiles, robotics and white goods industries. Five exploitable results were developed into real business cases. All five have the potential to sustainably and lastingly optimize industrial processes. Technical solutions such as sensors and cameras and state-of-the-art software applications enable the user to carry out maintenance and optimization even earlier and more efficiently.
Now that the project has concluded, it is a good moment to highlight some of its key achievements. The integration and validation of the technologies developed during the project provided valuable information regarding their implementation in the pilot partners’ facilities. For instance, the Swiss high-end kitchen manufacturer Podium was able to create a digital model of its entire production line. This allowed the company to identify weak points and significantly improve the line’s efficiency and reduce the number of stoppages. The consortium achieved a similar success with Turkish textile producer ZORLUTEKS, whose textile production machinery is now operating much more efficiently and robustly. Finally, digital solutions and predictive maintenance technology helped Slovenian white goods manufacturer GORENJE to increase productivity and reduce the number of failures.
State-of-the-art technology boosts productivity
The RECLAIM project has developed five key technologies that will make a significant contribution to more efficient operation of manufacturing equipment, as well as to extending its lifetime and ensuring that companies have an overview of it at all times so they are as well-equipped as possible for the challenges of modern manufacturing.
- Intelligent Health Management Toolkit: This allows the welding equipment to monitor its own performance and inform the user when maintenance is required.
- Decision Support Framework (DSF): This solution helps company decision-makers to find the optimal strategies for extending their industrial equipment’s lifetime. The DSF analyzes various types of real-time data to provide customized solutions.
- Legacy Machine Booster: This technology combines a smart sensorial network with real-time situation monitoring. Adding these sensing capabilities to specialized machines enables continuous condition monitoring that helps companies to keep their machines working efficiently for longer and prevent costly failures.
- REPLICA Digital Twin: By integrating various simulation tools and algorithms for fault diagnosis, this solution enables accurate prediction and optimal planning of the machines’ remaining useful life. The system helps companies to prevent failures and improve efficiency by carrying out timely maintenance.
- ICE Knowledge Discovery: As well as storing production data, this powerful business intelligence tool offers companies extended functionalities such as dashboard creation and a choice of ways to visualize the data. One particularly useful feature is the ability to visualize data in conjunction with the use of advanced algorithms like machine learning. This supports decision-making by providing a deeper insight into data patterns.
Further information about the RECLAIM project: www.reclaim-project.eu
Contact
Melanie Gralow (author)
Project Manager Business Development
Steinbeis Europa Zentrum
Steinbeis 2i GmbH (Stuttgart)