In cooperation with the Know-Center, the AC2T Research Centre has integrated a method with high potential into its corporate strategy. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, machine downtimes are reduced, which leads to an increase in productivity.
The major challenges of globalisation and the achievement of climate change targets affect us all. For the manufacturing industry, too, these are two extremely important issues – for the entire value chain. The focus is not only on sustainability and efficiency in production, but also on accelerated product development. Because technological leadership, both on the product and production side, can provide Europe with the production/manufacturing advantage.
This is where forward-looking digitization strategies come into play. The research and development of new products, processes and markets can be significantly accelerated by data-driven technologies – a phenomenon known as data-driven innovation that offers enormous potential. The research centre AC2T has already integrated this method into its corporate strategy and cooperates with the Know-Center, Graz.
The success stories range from self-learning sensors to the prediction of material properties of new materials. The intelligent sensors that are used enable predictive maintenance. This can significantly reduce machine downtime and increase productivity. The experts at the Know-Center use the wealth of data generated in the process to use AI and data-driven engineering to identify the causes of quality fluctuations and downtimes in production. This requires the combination of billions of data points and thousands of sensor channels in virtual sensors. Corresponding systems are developed at the Know-Center and tested at AC2T in a tribological environment. The result is an intelligent, virtual sensor that learns from very large amounts of data and opens up new possibilities in automated production processes.