XPRESS project will address the following strategic objectives:
1. To establish a breakthrough for the factory of the future with a new flexible assembly and manufacturing concept based on the generic idea of “Manufactron” integrated in cross-sectoral learning networks for a customised production and a flexible system organisation. This knowledge based concept integrates the complete process chain from the production planning to the assembly and finally the quality assurance of the produced/assembled products and the reusability.
2. To meet the challenges of future intelligent manufacturing concepts to integrate intelligence and flexibility not only at the “highest” level of the production control system but also at the shop floor level.
3. Demonstrate the feasibility in 3 representative applications (automotive, aeronautics, electrical industry).
XPRESS objectives are threefold:
1. To reduce ramp-up times and production costs drastically through a new innovative simulation software and databases including process information for an optimal production configuration.
2. To develop a concept for a flexible and multi-variant production. The latter allows for the production of different variants of a product on the same production line.
3. To develop an integrated quality assurance system for the quality monitoring of the production process.
XPRESS aims furthermore at supporting:
1. The integration of humans in the production process by observing and interpreting their workflow using worker information systems so that workers can be more flexible and be quickly integrated into changing production cycles and requirements.
2. The development of methods/interfaces to combine already existing machines/tools/production lines with the XPRESS technology.
3. The demonstration of the results by prototype implementation.
4. The standardisation of the developed methods.