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Consortium and Partners

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd

Project Coordination — Research & Development

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is a state owned and controlled non-profit limited liability company established by law and operating under the ownership steering of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment of Finland. VTT is the Project Coordinator encompassing all the necessary processes for ensuring that the project’s objectives are successfully met, all communication processes are in place and all quality procedures are followed, including risk management. VTT has also the leading role in the work package contributing in pilots planning, preparation and evaluation methodology. In addition, VTT is responsible to design, plan and decide the best holistic modelling techniques for scalable digital twin implementation of the general manufacturing processes, as well as for the development of business models for the AI technologies and for the companies using the innovations.

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e. V. (FIT)

Project Member — Research & Development

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology is the leading organisation of institutes of applied research and development in Europe. In this project, FIT will be one of the main technical partners as it will lead WP6, contributing in the identification of the security requirements for the project and the design and implementation of the tooling to support software provisioning activities on edge devices. In addition, it will be responsible for the automated process data analysis and annotation, for the inclusion of human resources into the automated AI pipeline, as well for the development of edge data management services and the definition of user need and scenario analysis.

Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH)

Project Member — Research & Development

The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) is one of the largest research centres in Greece. Under knowlEdge, CERTH will undertake the responsibility for coordinating and monitoring the work package concerned with the Decision Support Framework. It will also contribute in the design and implementation of the knowlEdge Decision Support System (DSS) and support the definition and architecture design of the open innovation platform. Further to that, CERTH will lead the implementation of a curated decentralized marketplace for practical AI algorithms and solutions, the data management, regulations and ethics, while it will also participate in other tasks.

Nextworks (NXW)

Project Member — SME ICT

Nextworks is an SME located in Pisa, Italy, operating in the IT and Telecommunications sectors. The company has a long-term experience in the frameworks of IoT, wireless, access and transport networks, digital video encoding and transport, control and automation, design and development of complex software systems on both traditional and embedded platforms. Nextworks is active in the consultancy market with activities ranging from pure support consulting to third-party design & developments of protocol stacks for equipment vendors, while the company products portfolio includes a “digital living” platform for smart building and smart yachting, now evolving towards smart factory customizations. Nextworks R&D team is active in several H2020 projects in the areas of 5G networks and IoT frameworks, driving its products roadmaps towards the latest innovative technologies. In knowlEdge, Nextworks will develop the distributed data collection platform, interconnecting thousands of heterogeneous sensing and actuating devices from the shopfloors, as enabler for novel AI applications in the Industry 4.0 sector.

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)

Project Member — Research & Development

Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC) is a public institution dedicated to higher education and research, specialised in the fields of architecture, engineering and technology. UPC will play the role of technology/research provider, contributing with its experience and expertise in Intelligent Decision Support Systems (IDSS), Recommender Systems, Machine Learning and Case-based Reasoning. UPC has experience in the design and implementation of IDSS, which have been deployed in many real-world domains such as the environmental field within wastewater treatment supervision systems, or in the industry field within the textile manufacturing industry or in the health field, within the nutrition diet recommendation. UPC will mainly contribute to the work package concerned with design and implementation of the KnowledEdge Decision Support System (DSS).

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)

Project Member — Research & Development

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) is the Spanish national supercomputing facility and a hosting member of the PRACE distributed supercomputing infrastructure. BSC will provide its AI experience and High-Performance Computing expertise. BSC will lead the work package concerned with Data Analysis and Knowledge Generation, contributing in designing generalized architectures in order to automatically generate AI models for Industrial Environments and in defining the best configuration to maximize the ML performance and thus the deployment, learning and evaluation by parallelization and other related optimization methods.

Information Catalyst for Enterprise (ICE)

Project Member — SME ICT

Information Catalyst (ICE) is a UK SME. ICE is a specialist consultancy assisting partners on commercial, RTD, software development and RDI activity. Its domain is sector-generic but is orientated towards the business integration, decision support, data value and project management. One of ICE’s main role in the project is to provide technical management of the distributed research and innovation activities taking place in the project. ICE’s technical contribution in the project will focus on the evolutionary requirements engineering, data modelling, systems monitoring, security and systems integration. An important aspect of ICE’s contribution will be the design and development of digital twins that can replicate the formal properties of both data and processes for real-time performance monitoring and behaviour analysis.

University of Münster (WWU)

Project Member — Research & Development

The University of Münster is one of the largest European universities with over 45,000 students (54% female) and close to 8,000 members of staff. It enjoys an outstanding reputation in and beyond Europe. WWU will provide scientific technologies and methodologies and contribute with its experience and expertise in the field of data science and data engineering. WWU lead the work package concerned with KnowlEdge Management & Marketplace, contributed in developing a specification for the description of information, knowlEdge and machine learning models and the necessary services for efficient and scalable knowlEdge management, while it also has lead dissemination activities. WWU left the project in 2022.

Fondazione LINKS – Leading Innovation & Knowledge for Society (LINKS)

Project Member — Research & Development

The LINKS Foundation – Leading Innovation & Knowledge for Society is a non-profit private Foundation founded in 2016, which promotes, conducts, and strengthens innovation and research projects processes, improving products implementation as well as the study of new approaches and models. LINKS in knowlEdge is mainly responsible for the architectural building block of Data Integration, Governance, and Quality Management. Specifically, LINKS will lead the development of the set of tools that will allow extracting useful info from the data collected, applying machine learning and data analysis techniques, and prepare them to better support the human decision by suggesting proper actions in several plant operations, e.g., maintenance planning, optimizing the production throughput and so forth.

Parmalat S.p.A. (PARM)

Project Member — Industrial and Pilot Partner

The Parmalat S.p.A. is a global player in the production and distribution of foods that are essential for everyday wellness: milk, dairy products and fruit beverages. Parmalat (together with Centrale del Latte di Roma) participates as one of the pilot partners, leading the Milk Pilot. Its role is mainly related to the validation, the evaluation and the verification that the proposed framework meets the requirements and specifications that were defined, according to the project’s objectives.

Kautex Textron GmbH & CO KG (K-T)

Project Member — Industrial and Pilot Partner

Kautex Textron as part of Textron Inc. is one of the main Tier-1 supplier for plastic fuel tank systems. Having invented the blow molding process in the 1950s, Kautex Textron continuously further developed the process, machine technology and product design. Kautex Textron is one of the industrial partners in the consortium and has the leading role in the work package contributing in knowledge dissemination and exploitation activities. Kautex Textron also leads the implementation of knowlEdge pilot in Germany, providing the data of process and product characteristics and production lines for testing and validation of the models to be developed on the basis of the digital twins and, in particular, contribute their domain knowledge on the process, product and production environment.

Bonfiglioli Slovakia sro (BSK)

Project Member — Industrial and Pilot Partner

Bonfiglioli Slovakia sro (BSK) is a subsidiary of Bonfiglioli Riduttori spa, one of the world leading industrial power transmission solution providers. Bonfiglioli Riduttori designs, manufactures and distributes solutions for all kinds of applications in industrial automation, mobile machinery and wind energy. Bonfiglioli participates as one of the pilot partners. Bonfiglioli is responsible to implement knowlEdge in a Pilot project inside its facility in Slovakia. Prior to this implementation, BSK will collaborate with Partner developing the AI Services, in order to define the requirements and scenarios to apply the AI services developed in the Slovakian shop-floor. Moreover, Bonfiglioli Digital specialists will support Project Partners to define a more rapid adoption of the identified technologies.

FernUniversität in Hagen (FUH)

Project Member — Research & Development

The University of Hagen is the largest German university with over 75,000 students and has developed into Germany’s leading institution for distance education. FUH will provide scientific technologies and methodologies and contribute with its experience and expertise in the field of data science and data engineering. FUH leads the work package concerned with KnowlEdge Management & Marketplace, contributes in developing a specification for the description of information, knowlEdge and machine learning models and the necessary services for efficient and scalable knowlEdge management, while it also leads dissemination activities. FUH joined the project in 2022.

DIMECC Ltd.

Project Member — Research & Development

DIMECC Ltd. provides customers with facilitation, program management and other co-creation services and helps them build consortia to achieve common goals. With 66 shareholders from industry and academia, DIMECC has a wide network of contacts, bridging the gap between companies, research & education and funding organizations. Currently DIMECC operates five industry-led ecosystems: SW4E (software engineering ecosystem), FAMN (twin transition for manufacturing and ICT companies), VAMOS (autonomous mobility in smart spaces), FAME (additive manufacturing), and One Sea (autonomous maritime). DIMECC’s program portfolio is over 900 million Euros. Along with KnowLedge, DIMECC currently participates in EU projects, such as ADMA TranS4MErs, SusTool and REBOOT Skills.