LicoPro
Lifecycle Design for Global Collaborative Production (large, EU-IST-2001-37603, IMS-2001-00009)
Researchers:
L. Gottschalk, S.Günther, N. Iliev, Prof. P. Schönsleben
Partners:
Academic:
Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) at Aachen University of Technology (RWTH Aachen, GER)
Production System Design Lab (PSD) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA)
Institute for Industrial Technologies and Automation (ITIA) of National Council of Research (I)
Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems and Automation (LMS) at University of Patras (GR)
University of Tokio – Department of Precision Machinery Engineering (JP)
Manufacturing Systems Laboratory at Sungkyunkwan University (KOR)
Industrial:
Daimler Chrysler AG (GER)
Chiron Werke GmbH & Co KG (GER)
Flexis AG (GER)
Hella KG Hueck & Co.(GER)
Schuler Hydroforming GmbH & Co KG (GER)
T-Systems International GmbH (GER)
Elcoteq AG (CH)
FLEXTRONICS Technology Switzerland GmbH (CH)
HILTI AG (LIE)
Frigoglass Group (GR)
Comau Systems S.p.a. (I)
Financed by:
EU IST / IMS
Motivation:
Production companies face global competition in an increasingly dynamic and unpredictable market environment. These markets are characterized by accelerating technological change, internationalization, and a permanent shift in the relation of demand and supply in logistics and production networks. Flexibility and agility of production systems and thus the capability to adapt with appropriate speed is an increasingly important competitive factor (e.g., adaption to changes in product mix, volume demand, product features, process technology, etc.). In this context a new paradigm for design, operation, and control of production systems is required.
Objectives:
LicoPro aims at an integrated design of in-plant and trans-corporate structures that are adaptable and re-usable with reduced lifecycle consumption of resources and investments. The overall objective of LicoPro is to develop a comprehensive explanation model for lifecycle robust design of global collaborative production. It covers strategic, organizational, technical, environmental, and cultural aspects of system design. The idea is to identify long term potentials to significantly increase the economic performance of production networks. Further objectives are identifying strategic leverages for sustainable gain in lifecycle performance and deriving a long-term roadmap to develop novel business applications. These encompass reference architectures, methods and tools for strategy deployment, (re)configuration planning, and evaluation and design of information technologies for global collaborative production.
The following activities have already been completed:
The entire project was successfully completed in October 2005. In the last year of the project the focus was on improving the existing software tools as well as on dissemination and exploitation activities. The tools implement the methodologies developed in earlier project phases, taking into account the gap analysis of existing models, methods, and software solutions. The project results thereby support requirements analyses (so called «scenario wizards»), configuration, and evaluation for short, medium, and long-term flexibility planning for production networks.
Among other things, the dissemination activities included scientific publications, one completed dissertation, and two dissertations currently in progress (planned to be finished in 2006). In addition, seminars, conferences, and small industry projects are still an ongoing vehicle for dissemination of the LicoPro results.