PROOF

Experiment description

PROOF experimentation was strategically oriented to the experimentation of the new Energy@Work IoT gateway integrated with original solutions for energy efficiency at the specific plant for the production of hybrid composite material components for the aeronautical sector in Brindisi (IT). The idea was to set up a sort of “plug-and-play” sustainability assessment system and test its feasibility on a real setting. Energy@Work has then integrated the existing equipment already in use at the plant, mainly related the internal variables of autoclave during the polymerization process (temperature and pressure for each of the component), with other intelligent measurement systems to address a global assessment of energy and gases (nitrogen, propane) consumption of the whole production process.

The production process steps are reported in the following figure, in which the steps interested by the experimentation have been highlighted using red rectangles

The final goal of this application experiment has been to maximize process sustainability and thus, as a result, to achieve the monitoring of energy and gas consumption with the minimum impact over generic production settings, providing at the same time a concrete support to the production managers and operators to optimize the production improving the awareness of global energy and gas consumptions of the production process and of their relationship with the costs of the production process.

Technical impact

PROOF is a decision support tool for production of hybrid composite material components for the aeronautical sector able to optimize the production process and the consumption of the energy and gas based on MIDIH Reference Architecture.

In particular, the system is composed of sensors which enable the gathering of data related to gas and electricity consumption collected through the E@W Smart Gateway.

MIDIH reference architecture has been exploited for data gathering (Orion Context Broker), advanced stream data processing (Apache Flink) and visualization (Knowage).

Economical / Business impact

The development of a cloud-based solution based on MIDIH Reference Architecture helped E@W in cloudification of innovative data-driven methodologies and data analytics tools to support process optimization improving the reliability and scalability of our solution for industry 4.0. Thanks to these outcomes, E@W have now in mind to create a new exploitation line focused on industry production process monitoring and optimization.

In fact, the results of the PROOF experimentation will be used to improve and complete the company asset offer, in terms of the set of Cloud-based services. In particular, E@W will show the PROOF innovative functionalities and results among our existing clientele, and not only, in an effort to consolidate and expand the E@W business activities, improving the network of relationships, increasing the number of potential partners and opening a new road for opportunities for innovation in terms of Cloud-based services for industry 4.0.