For of European manufacturing companies, the most relevant challenge in achieving the expected increase of production performance for highly customized products is to master the complexity of the supply chain and logistics in the global production networks. Ad-hoc...\n\nFor of European manufacturing companies, the most relevant challenge in achieving the expected increase of production performance for highly customized products is to master the complexity of the supply chain and logistics in the global production networks. Ad-hoc collaboration and setup of production coalitions is necessary to answer the customization wishes of customers for their individual products. DIGICOR addresses the development of a collaboration platform, tools, and services for the setup and coordination of production networks and the integration of SMEs and logistics providers into the supply chain of large OEMs.

The solution is based on an open platform integrating tools and services and implementing case specific governance rules and procedures for collaboration, knowledge protection, and security. The open platform will provide services creating a marketplace for the collaboration partners, for planning and control and risk management. It will be open to third parties.

The DIGICOR overall objectives are:

• To develop governance rules and procedures for the collaboration in production networks and a knowledge protection model
• To develop an open ICT platform and tools and services to support the management and control of collaboration networks using Industry 4.0 methods and means
• To develop novel business models for operation and further maintenance and improve the collaboration platform and tools and services
• To demonstrate the DIGICOR solution in three industrial use cases

Within the first reporting period the DIGICOR project has worked on following topics:

• To understand the problem and the end-user's needs and to identify the use cases
  • to analyse the actual practices and to identify the process and technology gaps and to derive recommendations
  • to derive the DIGICOR end-user requirements and to establish the requirements management
  • to identify the internal and external use cases

Within the WP1 (Requirements & Business Models) the end-user requirements were derived and the first service concepts and business models were derived.

• Establishment the internal and external community and the support tools
  • Setup meetings for community members? involvement
  • Complement internal use cases by additional use cases developed with community members and get first feedback on planned tools? functionalities

In WP2 (Community, Use Cases and Continuous Validation) the three internal use cases were identified and detailed and first external use cases were discussed. The internal community (industrial cluster members) and the external community were established.

• Define the DIGICOR solution architecture & tools and to implement the platform and tool functionalities (1st revision)
• to establish the functional and performance requirements of the platform and to create the specification of the overall architecture
• to define the tools functional and performance requirements and to define the platforms? technical specification (middleware and supportive tools)
• To implement the first software release of the specified architecture, middleware and tools: To Implement and release 1st version of platform's core software infrastructure, of the marketplace and tool store, of platform's API and semantic data models and of the other tools providing core functionalities.

Within WP3 (Architecture and System Specification) the development of the DIGICOR architecture and tools were completed. In WP 4 (Tools) the DIGICOR platform core tools functionality was specified and a first software release were implemented. The middleware and supportive tools were specified and implemented in WP 5 (Middleware and supportive tools and interfaces).

• Setup the DIGICOR results dissemination & exploitation
  • to develop the dissemination plan and to start dissemination
  • to start the exploitation planning and IPR strategy definition

WP 8 (Exploitation & Dissemination) has established the strategy and detailed plan for DIGICOR results dissemination and exploitation and has started to rollout the means like the DIGICOR webpage, newsletter, social network pages, etc. Also the IPR strategy and exploitation plan was developed.

• To setup and execute the project management
  • The project management (WP9) was established and all necessary project management means were implemented. An External Advisory Board with additional industrial end-users (Flensburg Shipyard, Rolls-Royce) were established.

The DIGICOR projects progress beyond the state of the art:

• To enable loss-free data interoperability over all layers of the automation pyramid using OPC UA.
• To implement a contract negotiation / establishment process for real-time and robust management of factory network automation pyramids across virtual logistics and manufacturing networksby the means of its production network resource-constraint and incident-aware agent-based risk management, evaluation, and recommendation tools.
• To develop an infrastructure allowing direct interconnection of distributed information systems of all supply chain members by semantic-based authentication / authorization approaches.

Within DIGICOR three industrial use cases will be implemented to demonstrate the innovation potential of the developed solution.

By those use cases the following expected results of the DIGICOR project until end of the project will be validated and demonstrated:

• Collaboration platform with interfaces to legacy IT (Airbus, SMEs) and services for ad-hoc network setup (marketplace), planning, rescheduling and analytics
• Reference platform for implementation at the service provider (Hanse Aerospace) using the SaaS model and a reference platform implementation for the service provider (Control 2K) to extend existing architectures to include the SaaS model
• Demonstration of the ad-hoc production system setup for two production cells during changes

The potential impact of the DIGICOR project results are:

• Improving efficiency in establishing contracts between one or more partners: Enhancement of existing contracting tools for tendering and provide technological support for establishing multi-party consortia for complex production demands.
• Transparent context aware production: Secure B2B communication channels for production harmonization and optimization will enable to observe production and logistic processes of their peers and to evaluate risks
• The platform supports horizontal and vertical supply - demand chains providing tools related to production planning and risk observation and tools for the production optimization and interconnection to sensors, individual machines, etc. for early problem identification.
• Major impact is expected in the field of new market opportunities. Thirds parties will be allowed to deploy the platform in order to host optimization tools, and to provide their own solutions as pluggable tools.
• Licensing and using the tool will be charged according to pricing strategy of the tool provider. The platform will thus form an ecosystem for collaboration within supply chains and between manufacturing and service companies.

• DIGICOR - Decentralised Agile Coordination Across Supply Chains

• Not specified