Assembly Lines In CIrculAtion – smart digital tools for the sustainable, human-centric and resilient use of production resources

A large part of production assets such as robotic arms, conveyor belts do not reach their maximal lifetime and become prematurely obsolescent. Anecdotal evidence from the automotive industry suggests that 60% to 70% of production resources is prematurely taken out of operation, scrapped, or at best sold for spare parts.

The aim of ALICIA is to create and demonstrate a Circular Manufacturing Ecosystem (CME) for production resources, such as robotic arms or conveyor belts. The underlaying vision is that within five to ten years, production resources will be traded and reused to their maximum utility in-between factories in Europe, ultimately contributing to “closing the loop” of production assets as circular economy subjects.

The project aim will be achieved by integrating and demonstrating in two real industrial environments (at Continental and Comau) a combination of innovative and symbiotic digital tools as key enabling technologies behind the ALICIA CME, ultimately enabling to design, deploy, run, decommission and re-circulate second-hand production lines 40% faster, reduce material consumption by up to 80% and reuse up to 100% of the assets. The innovations behind ALICIA include a machine-readable ontology for mapping factory owner requirements, an AI-matchmaking engine for combining incumbent factory assets with second-hand assets coming from the ALICIA online marketplace, a Plug & Produce middleware for seamlessly connecting the production assets and a Digital Shadow/Digital Twin to ramp-up and operate the ALICIA second-hand line. Novel Circularity-as-a-Service business models will be evaluated.

ALICIA addresses the EU “machinery and equipment” as well as “machinery repair service” market segments, which together contributed 288 Billion EUR in value added to the EU economy in 2018. ALICIA is expected to contribute to increasing the EU’s resilience against disruptions in global supply chains and significantly contribute to the creation of a circular economy.