December 19, 2022
AI PROFICIENT Project.
Dear reader,
with this article we will begin a series dedicated to the presentation of the projects of the ICT 38 Cluster (AI-MAN), engine and inspiration of our AI4MANUFACTURING Community Hub, open to all projects that want to participate. Our commitment is to create a community where to share and offer support, and provide knowledge about innovation, development and digitization, through the application of artificial intelligence technologies within the manufacturing sector.
Nine projects, funded under the ICT-38-2020 Call and focusing on integrating state-of-the-art AI technologies in the manufacturing domain, joined their forces towards more effective work on Artificial Intelligence in manufacturing. The AI-MAN cluster, supported by EFFRA and the Connected Factories project, aims at exploiting synergies and increasing the impacts.
ICT-38-2020 projects:
- AI-PROFICIENT (Artificial Intelligence for improved PROduction efFICIEncy, quality and maintenance – 957391)
- ASSISTANT (leArning and robuSt deciSIon SupporT systems for agile mANufacTuring environments – 101000165)
- COALA (COgnitive Assisted agile manufacturing for a LAbor force supported by trustworthy Artificial Intelligence – 957296)
- EU-Japan.AI (Advancing Collaboration and Exchange of Knowledge Between the EU and Japan for AI-Driven Innovation in Manufacturing – 957339)
- knowlEdge (Towards AI powered manufacturing services, processes, and products in an edge-to-cloud-knowlEdge continuum for humans [in-the-loop] – 957331)
- STAR (Safe and Trusted Human Centric Artificial Intelligence in Future Manufacturing Lines – 956573)
- MAS4AI (Multi-Agent Systems for Pervasive Artificial Intelligence for assisting Humans in Modular Production Environments – 957204)
- TEAMING.AI (Human-AI Teaming Platform for Maintaining and Evolving AI Systems in Manufacturing – 957402)
- XMANAI (Explainable Manufacturing Artificial Intelligence – 957362)
About the name
AI PROFICIENT: Artificial Intelligence for improved production efficiency, quality and maintenance.
By combining human knowledge with AI capabilities, the EU-funded AI-PROFICIENT project will develop proactive control strategies to improve manufacturing processes in terms of production efficiency, quality and maintenance.
About the project
The overall goal is to increase the positive impact of AI technology on the manufacturing process as a whole, while keeping the human in a central position, assuming supervisory (human-on-the-loop) and executive (human-in-command) roles. By identifying the effective means for human-machine interaction, the project will assist Europe’s manufacturing and process industry to improve production planning and execution.
About the Objectives
AI-PROFICIENT will develop a technical and business ecosystem to demonstrate the potential for improved performance in production plants, by bringing the advanced AI technologies to production lines and facilitating the cooperation between humans and machines. In this regard, AI-PROFICIENT proposes an evolution from hierarchical and reactive decision making for plant automation towards self-learning and proactive control strategies that take full advantage of integration of advanced AI technologies with production plants. This will be achieved by meeting the following General Objectives (GOs), setting the conditions for wide-scale applicability and replicability across the EU manufacturing and process industry:
- GO1: Integrating existing and emerging AI technologies to create the AI-PROFICIENT platform for digitalized production plants, leveraging the platform AI services and local intelligence of smart components at system edge, to enable agile production processes and improved operation planning and execution, while increasing the Overall Production Efficiency (OPE) (increase in OPE by between 5% and 10% depending on process).
- GO2: Piloting the AI-PROFICIENT solution in 3 production plants which operate in different manufacturing domains, under different use case scenarios, involving the AI-enabled predictive fault detection and diagnostics, and proactive maintenance, demonstrating its potential to improve the quality of products and processes (low-quality products reduction by between 20% and 50%).
- GO3: Identifying the effective means for human-machine collaboration, while respecting the privacy, safety and security requirements and following the ethical principles, in order to enable the AI decision-making explainability and transparency, as well as the reinforcement mechanisms based on the human knowledge and feedback to improve the trustworthiness of AI in manufacturing domain.
The Expected Results
- SMART COMPONENTS FOR EMBEDDED AI AT SYSTEM EDGE
- IIOT FOR SMART COMPONENT INTEGRATION AND INTEROPERABILITY
- AI PROGNOSTICS FOR SYSTEM DEGRADATION AND HEALTH STATE ASSESSMENT
- AI ENABLED DECISION-MAKING FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE
- SEMANTIC LIFTING AND MODEL AGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES FOR XAI
- HYBRID DIGITAL TWINS AND PROCESS MODELLING
- GENERATIVE OPTIMISATION OF PRODUCTION PROCESSES (HUMAN IN THE LOOP)
- ROLE-SPECIFIC VISUALIZATION FOR TRANSPARENT AI DECISION SUPPORT
- “ETHICS BY DESIGN” APPROACH
To demonstrate the effectiveness and flexibility of the overall concept, the AI-PROFICIENT solution will be fully integrated, deployed and validated in three different operation environments provided by two manufacturing enterprises, CONTINENTAL and INEOS. In collaboration with their plant operators, AI-PROFICIENT will ensure the end-user engagement throughout the project lifetime, considering requirements specification, deployment and validation, as well as development of recommendations for ethical principles for trustworthy AI in manufacturing domain.
The Consortium
- UNIVERSITE DE LORRAINE (as Coordinator)
- CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
- CONTINENTFUNDACION TEKNIKERAL FRANCE SNC
- INEOS SERVICES BELGIUM
- INEOS MANUFACTURING BELGIUM BV
- INEOS MANUFACTURING DEUTSCHLAND GMBH
- TENFORCE
- TEKNOLOGIAN TUTKIMUSKESKUS VTT OY
- INOS HELLAS AE EFARMOGES PLIROFORIKIS AUTOMATISMOU ROMBO
- IBERMATICA SA
- INSTITUT MIHAJLO PUPIN
- ATHENS TECHNOLOGY CENTER ANONYMI VIOMICHANIKI EMPORIKI KAI TECHNIKI ETAIREIA EFARMOGON YPSILIS TECHNOLOGIAS
AI-PROFICIENT has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 957391