European project XPRESS - Intelligent solutions for flexible production

The Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum assisted the medium sized company Harms & Wende GmbH during the entire project development of XPRESS, from the development of the project idea and the writing of the proposal to the contract negotiations in Brussels. Since the 1st of January 2007 SEZ has been partner in the project and responsible for the management of knowledge, of intellectual property, for technological studies as well as the administrative and financial project management.

XPRESS is one of the big collaborative projects of the European Union in the area of flexible production. Current approaches in flexible production are either concentrated on flexible concepts on the organisational level or have the disadvantage that the implementation of the methods demand a totally new production line. The approach followed by XPRESS, however, integrates the complete process chain from the production planning to the assembly and finally the quality assurance of the produced/assembled products and the reusability.

Less costs and time will be needed for planning, constructing, setting up and testing of a new assembly/ production line by providing a knowledge base tool for production configuration as well as multi-variant production by having flexible and dynamic production systems.

For that reason, XPRESS will significantly contribute to the concept of the factory of the future, being able to anticipate and to respond to rapidly changing consumer needs, producing high-quality products in adequate quantities while reducing costs and increasing reusability.

Project duration: 01/2007 – 06/2011
Countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Hungary

Contact:

Dr. Sandrine Doretto, Tel. 0721 93519 11
Email: doretto@steinbeis-europa.de