UC helps develop innovative intelligent systems for sustainable Circular Manufacturing

^{Abridged translation: Diana Taborda}

A research team from the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC) is developing innovative intelligent systems designed for circular and sustainable manufacturing in the scope of the 'KYKLOS 4.0' project.

The project “ KYKLOS 4.0: An Advanced Circular and Agile Manufacturing Ecosystem based on rapid reconfigurable manufacturing process and individualized consumer preferences“, funded by the European H2020 programme with a total of 16 million euros, is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year and is coordinated at UC by Alberto Cardoso, a CISUC researcher and professor at the Department of informatics Engineering of the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra (DEI-FCTUC).

Alberto Cardoso explains that "The overall aim of the project is to contribute to a sustainable circular economy from an Industry 4.0 standpoint, focused on circular manufacturing. It therefore seeks to develop intelligent technologies that can perform life-cycle assessment of equipment at any given moment in order to estimate its usable life, the process of degradation and also to identify abnormal operating patterns that can be used to prevent future failures or breakdowns,".

This new predictive maintenance tool has already been tested on equipment including cranes, aircraft engines and industrial production lines. It allows us to anticipate any problems that might eventually lead to maintenance being carried out at an early stage.

The researchers point out that "Predicting the lifespan of equipment and the occurrence of possible failures will reduce equipment downtime, waste and maintenance costs, which in some cases can mean a very significant reduction in costs. It also extends the product life cycle, while promoting more sustainable manufacturing processes with greater energy efficiency and low material consumption."

According to the CISUC team, several companies are already using the entire ecosystem resulting from the project, by tailoring the technical components and the system to their own business settings.

"Overall, these components have been tested and showed positive results, which validate the system developed and demonstrate the technical, economic and environmental feasibility of the "KYKLOS 4.0" ecosystem to redefine industrial manufacturing services and processes, thus improving their operational efficiency," Cardoso concludes.

Find out more about KYKLOS 4.0 here.