Significant progress in the STREAM-0D project for manufacturing with 0 defects

During two days, international representatives partners from the European project, STREAM-0D, have met in Zaragoza, at the headquarters of the Technological Institute of Aragon ITAINNOVA, which is the coordinator, and the headquarters of Fersa Bearings, to assess the progress of the work done by the teams that comprise it. The Project Officer and the external evaluator congratulated them for their work and were especially impressed by the quality, complexity, and speed of execution of the simulation models.

The first day was held at the ITAINNOVA facilities. The team of ITAINNOVA, led by José Ramón Valdés, is also integrated by the engineers: Leticia Gracia, Salvador Izquierdo, and Isaac Nadal. At the end of the meeting held at the Aragonese technology center, they indicated that "we already have very complex simulation models. Now we are working to integrate the simulation models in the line, feed them with the data measured in the line and implement the control systems that act on the process, using the values calculated by the optimization algorithms to adjust the process, reduce the variability of the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators of the product that is being manufactured), eliminate rejects and achieve a manufacturing with zero defects ".

The second day, took place in the facilities of Fersa, one of the final users of the project. We have provided our facilities as a testing ground to analyze the results of the project's developments. Fernando Cebrián, Factory Manager in Zaragoza, has been in charge of coordinating and reporting the results to the rest of the partners. Thanks to the technology developed by Stream 0-D, we have incorporated into our lines measuring equipment that adjusts to the temperature of the piece and machine parameter management systems to guarantee the optimization of the process. With these developments we hope to reduce the production cycle time between 5 and 10% and, although this technology has only been applied to the Zaragoza plant, we are already working to extend it to the Jiaxing and Steyr factories. In addition, the system of data management, process parameters, and quality measurements, will evolve for new Industry 4.0 systems, such as the new line of Fersa installed in Zaragoza's plant, which will serve to supply with bearings to Mercedes-Benz's truck axles in models like the Actros.

The aim of the STREAM-0D project is to move towards manufacturing with zero defects by integrating into production systems simulation models capable of interacting with the production process in real time. These models are fed, on the one hand, with real production data and control, on the other hand, the production process based on the prediction of the model itself, all at the pace marked by the production line. The immense potential of this Industry 4.0 technology will allow to reduce the variability of production, increase the flexibility of the line and eliminate defects. The integration of computationally high cost simulation models in high performance production lines is possible thanks to the order reduction techniques that allow obtaining instant solutions of complex models. The project will demonstrate this technology in three production processes of the automotive sector: brake servo, bearings, and seals. These processes are completely different from each other since they use different production methods, different manufacturing processes, and different materials.

The participating entities are: Instituto Tecnológico de Aragón, ITAINNOVA (Spain, as coordinator). Fersa Bearings (Spain). ZF TRW-LUCAS VARITY GmbH (Germany). STANDARD Profil Spain S.A. (Spain). University of Patras - Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems and Automation (lms) (Greece). Ecole Centrale de Nantes (France). Integrated Environmental Solutions Limited (IES) (United Kingdom). STAM SRL (Italy). Day-One srl (Italy). Cetri Center for Technology Research and Innovation ltd (Cyprus).