Engineering Innovation in
Digital Industry
Blockchain technology is enabling new paradigms for Industry 4.0, leading companies towards new levels of productivity.
Approach & Solution
Approach
The FAR-EDGE project is a joint effort of global leaders in manufacturing technologies towards industrial automation and Future Internet, aimed at promoting the adoption of virtualized factory automation solutions.FAR-EDGE implements architectural concepts based on emerging standards for industrial automation, in particular RAMI 4.0 and the reference architecture of the Industrial Internet Consortium.
This enable us to lower the barriers for manufacturers (including SMEs) to move towards the Industry 4.0 vision by increasing automation, streamlining manufacturing processes and facilitating new production models and trends (notably mass-customization and reshoring).
Solution
FAR-EDGE introduces, implements and validates an open platform for factory automation, creating the basis for an ecosystem of novel decentralized automation solutions for the Factories of the Future (FoF).The platform is based on the paradigm for the Future Internet, on edge computing architecture, leveraging IoT/Cyber-Physical Systems and Blockchain technologies.The latter, Blockchain (mainly its "distributed consensus“function), has an important role: it decentralizes the responsibility of the production process, which is delegated to smart machines able to work together autonomously, without a central coordination point and within a well-defined system of common rules.
FAR-EDGE is validated in real-life plants (e.g. Volvo, Whirlpool) and is applied in user-driven business cases for mass-customization and reshoring, aiming at evaluating the results of the project.
Results
Less effort to adapt production and reduced costs
Less barriers for implementing new technologies
Reduced costs
Higher production quality
Higher speed and reliability
Project value
Innovation Cost cutting Process performance
Enabling Technologies
Blockchain IoT
Project Team
Research & Innovation