Consortium Members
Partners Countries: Sweden and Belgium.
Sweden
Damill AB
A Swedish engineering company that specialized in measurement techniques & machine diagnostics. The company develops and produces systems and services for branches such as railway, hydropower, and mining industries. Typical applications are condition monitoring, railway weighbridges, and sensor applications based on machine vision technology. https://www.damill.com/ External link.
Tasks and added value
Damill is able to assess the railway asset using condition monitoring and a predictive maintenance scheme for the reduction of the carbon footprint and cost reduction at the same time.
Strategic Importance
Damill is participating to gain insights on how to implement sustainability and environmental impact assessment in their current methods
Luleå University of Technology
One of the few Universities in the world that currently offer training and research in operation and maintenance engineering. LTU is a strategic center of excellence for the infrastructure sector, which conducts research and development with a focus on streamlining operations and maintenance of the railways, mining, paper mill, process industry (vehicle production and vehicle part manufacturer), and construction industries. LTU also has experience in leading several national and EU projects. LTU provides a platform for effective interdisciplinary collaborations between universities, businesses, companies, and authorities. Its role in the project is a knowledge provider as it brings its expertise in lifecycle cost modeling (LCC), RAMS, predictive analytics, programming, business models, and reliability and maintenance engineering.
Tasks and added value
LTU will use the research findings and other project outcomes in different scenarios, mostly education,
and research. In education, the bachelor, master, and doctoral programs in maintenance engineering of
LTU will be positively fed by the fresh and up-to-date knowledge of NRPCES in terms of maintenance
of infrastructure, and production system. Regarding research, LTU will exploit
NRPCES outcomes in other linear assets like cables, roads, oil pipes, etc. in terms of implemented technologies and methodologies. Finally, LTU will be active in the dissemination and exploration of the project outcome by different means e.g organizing workshops, publishing articles in journals and conferences, defining Master, PhD, and doctoral theses, organizing summer schools, etc.
LTU will lead two working packages WP1 and WP5 and will be active participant in other WPs.
Strategic Importance
When the project is executed and by disseminating knowledge from the project to the participating industry partners, its competitiveness, capacity, as well as their product quality, and environmental performance will be strengthened.
Mälardalen University
A knowledge provider in NRPCES as it brings its expertise in multivariate analysis of data, data mining, predictive analytics, design and architecture of the decision-support system. Furthermore, within NRPCES, Mälardalen University intends to contribute with research and tool development regarding methods for automated prediction and estimation of machinery lifetimes given sustainability parameters. This will contribute to better energy consumption and sustainability planning of machines used in various sectors of our daily life.
Tasks and added value
MDU leads WP7 on "Project dissemination, exploitation and marketing activities". In terms of technical contributions, most of our effort is in WP3 ("Environmental impacts and circular economy") and minor in WP5 ("Economic replacement time (ERT) model development"). In these WPs, we contribute in Tasks T3.1, T3.2, T3.4,T3.5 & T5.2. MDU will add value in NRPCES through our knowledge creation into KPIs for monitoring and environmental impact assessment. Also, we will provide expertise into factors influencing the optimal replacement time of machineries as well as emission and life cycle cost computations.
Strategic Importance
MDU is one of the best known universities in Sweden for industry-relevant research. MDH has a track record of successfully completing several ITEA projects, such as ATAC, TIMMO-2-USE, ASSUME and TESTOMAT. NRPCES represents a natural extension to our portfolio of industrially relevant research supporting close co-production with the industry. In addition to international projects, a closely related project is underway that is funded by The Knowledge Foundation on the topic of "secondary life management of electric vehicle batteries". MDH plans to extend the knowledge gained in this project to design an automated solution that can estimate and predict machinery and component life time with accuracy and by taking into account necessary sustainability factors.
Predge AB
Predge delivers a sophisticated decision support service for operation and maintenance for both Rolling Stock and Rail Infrastructure. By utilizing existing data sources, failures of assets are forecasted, the remaining useful life is quantified, and actionable insights are provisioned. Our approach is unique, as it combines domain knowledge, first principles and AI in the analytics to generate the actionable insights. Data sources include condition data from wayside monitoring equipment such as wheel impact loads, acoustics, hot box, hot wheel, and wheel profile data. The solution utilizes various other data sources from the customer relating to operation and maintenance for a more holistic view on the asset degradation. It can also include assessments and inspection data by maintenance personnel, see www.predge.se External link..
Tasks and added value
Predge is able to optimize refurbishment and replacement of asset analysis using condition monitoring and predictive maintenance scheme with reduction of the carbon footprint and a cost reduction at the same time.
Strategic Importance
Predge will participate to gain insights on how to implement LCC and environmental impact assessment in their current methods
Trafikverket
The Swedish transport authority that takes responsibility of infrastructure development of roads, railway, maritime, and air transport. Trafikverket will be a use case provider in NRPCES. In particular, the use case will consist of multiple scenarios, each dealing with equipment replacement strategies in road and railway domains.
Tasks and added value
Trafikverket (The Swedish Transport Administration) is responsible for long-term planning of the transport system for all types of traffic as well as for the construction, operation and maintenance of state roads and railways. Trafikverket is a public authority, which means that it does not conduct any business activities, including sales. On the other hand, Trafikverket is a large public procurer of construction, operation and maintenance and components for infrastructure. For railway infrastructure, great demands are placed on operational compatibility and traffic safety, which means that Trafikverket has a special unit “Material Service” which is responsible for the purchase of railway-specific material, Material Service is also responsible for the production of long rails and the reuse of worn exchanged rails. Since the railway is to be considered a very environmentally friendly transport system.
Strategic Importance
Trafikverket strives to procure all its operations so that LCC is reduced, logistics and production are optimized and that the components that are procured have been manufactured so that they minimize climate impact. NRCPES enables the Swedish Transport Administration to set requirements for suppliers and tools to evaluate and validate the best solution.
Belgium
Sirris
A Belgian private collective research center founded in 1949 by Agoria, the multi-sector federation for the Belgian technology industry. It has about 2.500-member companies, which range from small and medium- sized businesses to multinational companies (> 95% SMEs), active in 13 technological sectors. Sirris' mission is to improve the competitiveness of its member companies through technology and innovation. It has currently about 140 employees in several domains of expertise: artificial intelligence, software engineering, mechatronics, materials, sustainability, advanced manufacturing. The team of in-house experts focuses on knowledge acquisition (fundamental and applied research) and knowledge transfer (industrial projects). sirris.be External link.
Tasks and added value
Sirris will mainly be involved in task related to data acquisition and data modelling. We will add our knowledge on exploring influential factors on lifecycle cost drivers and on how to reduce the carbon footprint. We will further provide knowledge related to precision manufacturing which will be beneficial with respect to refurbishment and replacement time. On top, we will provide our input and perform research on platform architecture and secure platform design.
Strategic Importance
The estimation of carbon footprint will be more and more important for manufacturing companies in the future, given FitFor55 and the European Green Deal. With this project, we will be forerunners in the Belgian and European landscape and will be able to transfer our knowledge to the broader manufacturing industry.
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