GLOBEMEN-SWISS

Maintenance and Optimization of Food or Feed-Processing Plants by Exploiting Information from Globally Distributed Networks (CTI 4658.1, IMS 99004)

Researchers:

G. Burger, I. Hartel, M. Schnetzler, Prof. P. Schönsleben

Academic Partners:

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
DTU Technical University of Denmark
Hosei University (JP)
JSPMI Japan Society for the Promotion of Machine Industry (JP)
Griffith University (AU)
CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (AU)

Financed by:

CTI 4658.1 / IMS 99004

Websites:

http://globemen.vtt.fi/

Motivation:

The GLOBEMEN-SWISS project was part of the international research project GLOBEMEN – Global Engineering and Manufacturing in Enterprise Networks – within the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems initiative (http://www.ims.org/). GLOBEMEN aimed to create ICT infrastructures and related tools to support globally distributed and dynamically networked operations in one-of-a-kind industries. By combining the views and requirements of various industries, GLOBEMEN aimed to guide and encourage the industry and IT vendors to develop and adopt improved ICT infrastructures. The GLOBEMEN-SWISS project was focused on the development of these models and tools for the management of maintenance, operational use, and renewal of products over their life cycle in virtual enterprises and networks. Of special interest were the electronic support of service tasks and the collaboration of different parties, such as the one-of-a-kind producer, customers, local agencies, and utility companies operating in a global virtual environment.

Objectives:

to develop models and tools for the management of maintenance, operational use, and renewal of products in a global and network environment,
to develop methods and tools to build up and use a knowledge base shared by manufacturer and several customers, in order to collect and structure knowledge for maintenance and optimization,
to define architectures and infrastructures for information exchange in a dynamic network based on state-of-the-art Internet technology,
to establish a procedure for integrating information and knowledge gained from operations and maintenance into the design and development process for new products,
to define generic reference architecture for distributed After-Sales Service (services, IT, processes, and organization),
to provide guidelines on how to build up and manage a service network,
to develop an industrial prototype of a working service network.

The GLOBEMEN project was completed successfully at the end of January 2003.