Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGDInformation and communications technology (ICT) is playing a major role in the digitalization of the manufacturing sector. Yet fewer than 25% of European manufacturing companies are currently benefiting from ICT-supported solutions. In order to increase the competitiveness of European producers across the board (and especially that of small and midsized companies), it’s essential for new, innovative solutions to be technologically and commercially scalable from the outset. In this context, the cloudification of services has emerged as an ideal enabler for digitalizing production.
Successful European initiatives such as CloudFlow, cloudSME, and Fortissimo have impressively demonstrated the benefits of cloudifying engineering services with a combination of HPC resources, calculation tools, and cloud computing platforms. This approach enables small and midsized manufacturing companies to carry out calculations and unravel problems that would otherwise be impossible to resolve. They thus become more competitive as a result of developing innovative, better-performing products faster.
The results of these initiatives are improving design – and to some extent also prototyping – processes in manufacturing. However, monitoring and optimization of production processes have not yet greatly benefited from integrated information workflows and simulation cycles based on online factory data.
The core partners of CloudFlow (ee-cloudflow.eu) and cloudSME (cloudsme.eu) are pooling their resources to take advantage of factory data with the aid of cloud-based engineering tools that deliver these benefits:
- They pave the way to production analytics.
- They enrich the production development process with online data.
- They simulate and optimize production processes with the goal of eventually supporting them in real time.
The consolidated platform comprising CloudFlow and cloudSME, with extended functionality for processing factory data, will be accessible via a central interface that lets participants interact and collaborate.
