Factory processes and automation for de- and re-manufacturing (RIA) (Made in Europe partnership)

Expected Outcome

• A viable industrial ecosystem for circularity in manufacturing industries emerges, enhancing both circularity and resilience;
• De-manufacturing technologies and practices become available, making decisive contributions to a European remanufacturing industry and market;
• Functions of products are retained, reused, upgraded or adapted through de-manufacturing and re-manufacturing; and
• Skills, standards and safety measures relevant to remanufacturing are developed.

Scope

Proposals should focus on developing de-manufacturing and re-manufacturing technologies at the factory level, addressing at least three of the following:

• Technologies to efficiently analyse part condition and support predictive maintenance, including for re-manufactured parts or components of lower value, e.g. by combining multimodal sensor data, AI and human inputs;
• AI and robotic-assisted technologies, e.g. innovative end-effectors, to de-manufacture products and components, including handling, sorting and extended logistics;
• Model-based systems, to allow de-manufacturing and re-manufacturing operators to use CAD data and digital twins related to the original parts (and contribute to the development of a digital ecosystem);
• Solutions allowing local (on-site) repair or re-manufacturing of high-added value components (applied to e.g. wind turbines, aircraft and vessels); and
• Solutions to plan the sequence of operations based on the characteristics of the incoming products to be re-manufactured.

Proposals should include a business case and exploitation strategy, as outlined in the introduction to this Destination. Depending on the approaches to be pursued, these should consider the best solutions to enhance adoption, for example coupling manufacturing with de-/re- manufacturing plants, product and component value, risk mitigation for variable de-/re-manufacturing flows.

This topic implements the co-programmed European Partnership Made in Europe.

Technology Readiness Level - Technology readiness level expected from completed projects

Activities are expected to start at TRL 4-5 and achieve TRL 6 by the end of the project - see General Annex B.