The project FALCON aims to deploy user experiences and user data collected via the Internet of Things (IoT) and social media for improvement of product-service systems (PSS). Customers play no longer a passive role in the product and service development process as they express their product and service experiences and opinions through social media. In addition, sensor systems in combination with products incorporated in the IoT, are becoming increasingly common.

THE PROJECT

The potential endless amounts of available information offer a rich ground for value creation in the product-service innovation chain. Accordingly, FALCON will develop a Virtual Open Platform to seamlessly connect product-service usage information to design and development processes.

The results of the FALCON project are facilitated within four Business Scenarios:

• white and brown goods
• healthcare products
• clothing textiles
• high tech products

CONSORTIUM

• Arçelik A.Ş. (Turkey). Arçelik is the consumer durables, consumer electronics and information technologies equipments design and manufacturing company of Koç Holding. Arçelik; founded in 1955; is the third and the sixth largest home appliances manufacturer in Europe and in the World respectively. Arçelik has 14 production plants in Romania, Russia, China, South Africa and Turkey and has 20 sales and marketing companies worldwide. Arçelik is serving its customers in more than 100 countries with different brands like Arçelik, Beko, Grundig, Blomberg, Defy, Elektra Bregenz. Arçelik acknowledges that sustainable achievement is not possible without investment in R&D. Hence, Arçelik is strongly investing in R&D; it has 7 R&D centres with over 1000 personnel and fully equipped test laboratories, and is Turkey’s leading producer of technology and patents. Arçelik owns more than 10% of the patents produced in Turkey over the last three years and it is the only Turkish company in the World International Property Organization’s listing of the top 500 patent applicants. Arçelik collaborates with local and international universities, suppliers, research organizations and research institutes in carrying out its R&D activities and is actively participating in EUREKA and EU Framework Programmes since 1993. Arçelik R&D centers have expertise on its own products as well as on the engineering disciplines that are related to product design functions, production and delivery systems as Supply-Chain, Production Management and Logistics Systems.

• BIBA – Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik GmbH (Germany). BIBA (Bremen Institute for Production and Logistics) is an engineering research institute developing technical and organizational solutions for tasks from various areas of production technology as well as from other related scientific disciplines and puts them into practice both in SMEs as well as multinational companies. The institute is directly linked to the University of Bremen, Faculty of Production Technology. The research unit “ICT applications for production (IKAP)” prepares, develops and realises methods and tools to support co-operative, inter-organisational enterprise networks. The research concentrates on efficient and effective collaborative design and production processes by applying innovative information and communication technologies (ICT). The research unit IKAP is divided into three departments, of which the department Intelligent ICT for Co-operative Production is involved in the FALCON IP. It deals with the application of ICT to develop and implement co-operative networks. Within this context, the acquisition, provision and transformation of process and product related information is considered. This information is used to integrate real products with their digital representations throughout their product lifecycle. The expected project results are compliant with BIBA’s core long-term strategy. The ICT-based solutions will be used to improve the competences as well as enhance and distribute worked out in-house technologies and methods, especially knowledge based engineering (KBE), PLM systems and knowledge acquisition.

• DATAPIXEL (Spain). DATAPIXEL was founded in 1999 with the objective of designing, developing and manufacturing systems and solutions in the field of computer vision and dimensional metrology in industrial and professional applications. DATAPIXEL developments are market driven, and provide high-end products to sectors such as automobile, electronics, energy, railway or aeronautics. DATAPIXEL supplies solutions in 3D dimensional inspection, virtual metrology, in line inspection and robot guidance systems by means of its sensor OPTISCAN, the best non-contact dimensional sensor of its kind, not only in accuracy or repeatability, but also in manageability and versatility. DATAPIXEL holds the Presidency of EMVA (European Machine Vision Association) and has actively collaborated in the development of the Strategic Research Agenda of the Photonics 21 Technology Platform, where it plays a key role. DATAPIXEL is also part of the micro- and nano-technology expert group set up by the EC in the area of metrology. DATAPIXEL product and service catalogue is formed by: 3D optical sensors. DATAPIXEL designs, manufactures and commercialises high-precision and high-speed 3D optical sensors for 3D micro and nano-measurement and digitalisation. 3D point cloud management & control systems: DATAPIXEL designs and develops optical sensor controls and highly flexible 3D point cloud information management systems for integration in complete digitalization and measuring setups. 3D point cloud analysis software: DATAPIXEL develops 3D point cloud data acquisition and processing modules for automated geometric feature extraction, profile and surface analysis. DATAPIXEL has participated in the following R&D projects: SCALAB (EC MNT 2010-2012): SCALAB project aims at development of scalable solutions for 3D micro-assembly automation of complex products in photonics with highest demands on accuracy. NanoCMM (FP6-NMP 2006-2011): The main objective of this project is to develop a universal Coordinate Measurement Machine that could be able to measure most of 3D geometries at micro and nano scale, including inside holes, steeps and behind obstacles. FLEXPAET (FP6-NMP 2008-2011): The main goal of the project is to develop a manufacturing process to replicate micro-structures in large area substrates, aiming at enhancing the use of LED as main source of light for a range of low price, energy saving and high efficient lighting products.

• Dena Cashmere (Italy). Dena Cashmere is a small Italian company working in the clothing sector of totally Made in Italy products. Dena cashmere choose carefully the best of Italian manufacturing firms to locate cashmere, blend cashmere and wool sweaters and clothes of high quality that meet the most demanding requirements of our customers. The cashmere garments are designed, developed and modified internally, before being produced at contractors. The property, thanks to studies on the subject during Engineering studies experiences, has always worked with the intention of driving the supply chain to the end customer’s actual demand, leading manufacturers and subcontractors to gradually undermine the procedures and delivery of the traditional sector. In addition, studies are underway on the possibility of ensuring the quality of production processes apparel through innovative technology as RFID and the web.

• EPFL – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Switzerland). The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) is one of the two Swiss Institutes of Technology, educating more than 7000 students in all engineering disciplines and participating in numerous national and international research projects in all engineering domains. The Computer Aided Design and Production Laboratory (LICP) of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering of EPFL is involved in various fundamental and applied research projects in the sustainable manufacturing in collaboration with Swiss and European industrial partners. LICP’s mission is to (i) improve the sustainable development of products, (ii) increase the productivity of manufacturing systems and (iii) optimize the operation of product recovery systems. LICP’s relevant challenges for the next generation manufacturing systems will (a) be able to optimize manufacturing according to multiple criteria such as rapidity, accuracy, efficiency and environmental impact, (b) reduce cycle time and thus increase productivity by an order of magnitude, (c) be extremely environmentally friendly and clean, capable of operating in a “clean environment”, assuring closed loops for all waste.

• Holonix S.r.l. (Italy). Holonix is a spin off from Politecnico di Milano. The Company provides advanced ICT solutions based on the research outputs of the university researches. Its staff is mainly coming from consultancy companies and has experience of industrial ICT implementation, while the link with the RTD is guarantee by senior researchers holding a Ph.D. from Politecnico di Milano. Holonix focuses on the Lifecycle Data and Knowledge Management, and its core solution is the “i-LiKe” (intelligent Lifecycle data and Knowledge) platform, which synthesizes the experiences and ideas from the last 8 years of research of Politecnico on Product Lifecycle Management. It is architecturally based on the achievements of several European projects, while intelligence algorithms and DSS come from the experiences in industrial researches carried out at Politecnico di Milano. The platform is composed of several modules, so the whole platform can be easily customized and satisfy different requirements of different customers such as, for example, logistic providers, production companies and assets management companies.

• I-Deal S.r.L. (Italy). i-Deal S.R.L. is the development in form of corporation of the autonomous activities, with more than 15 year experience in business and research in the field of IT, clothing and research of its founders E.Alessandro Canepa and Stefano Fasana. It has been set up in the present form under the decree Law of October 2012 of Monti government to support the new innovation activities in Italy, in line with the EC politics in terms of new entrepreneurship development. Company activity is focused on an original know how of the company, which joints a deep knowledge of textile and clothing business, in particular in the research fields of production, energy, management and interoperability on one side and of IT, mathematics and organization of the other. The business experience has been enriched by a long lasting participation into EC funded projects of its founders. i-Deal has also developed and is testing an original and specific know how in the systems to support clothing on line sales, and in particular an innovative solution to match clothing sizes and consumers measures to optimize consumers choice. Previous research and business experiences in collaboration major industrial groups (Zegna, Corneliani), e-commerce (Vente Privee, BuyVip, Privalia, Born4Shop,Yoox), information technology (TXT e-solutions, Intel) and public bodies (European Commission, Italian Prime ministry Agency for Innovation Development, Textile Innovation Pole, DITF Germany, Euratex) are part of the background of the i-Deal key personnel.

• ISADEUS (France). ISADEUS  (Innovation Strategy And Digital Engineering Using Semantics) , helps Industrial companies in their digital strategy and in the design and deployment of innovative solutions based on the use of industrial and technological standards to better fulfill their business needs all along their assets lifecycle. ISADEUS has currently activities in the Oil and Gas, power and process industries to build-up Reference Data Libraries to enable collaborative working and long term retention of knowledge. ISADEUS is supporting companies in the follow-up of standardization activities for data integration and applications interoperability.

• Philips Healthcare (Netherlands). Royal Philips Electronics is a main electronics company focusing on healthcare and well-being. In healthcare, Philips’ innovation revolves around improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare through a focus on care cycles. Central to care cycle thinking is a patient-centric approach that optimizes healthcare delivery for all the major diseases. In the Philips Healthcare (PH) sector, over 12% of systems sales are invested in R&D. Philips combines its expertise in medical technology with clinical know-how of its customers to produce innovative solutions that meet not just the needs of individual patients, but which also enable healthcare professionals to work faster, more easily and more cost-effectively. While PH has a large global organization, in the Netherlands more than 3000 people work at PH, of which 1000 in R&D. At PH in Best the Business Innovation Unit ICAP is involved in FALCON. ICAP stands for Imaging Clinical Applications and Platforms. ICAP was created in June 2010 to meet the demands of our customers who are asking for solutions that provide them with a cockpit of integrated clinical applications and information they can access any time, any place. Right now, ICAP is accelerating development of our workstations and platforms, and leveraging a team of over 4300. Teams work together to deliver a leading workspace portal solution and provide a best-in-class integrated consoles and application platform for Philips Healthcare.

• algoWatt SpA (Italy).algoWatt designs, develops and integrates solutions for the management of energy and natural resources, in a sustainable and socially responsible way, ensuring a competitive advantage.
  The Company provides management and control systems that integrate devices, networks, software and services with a clear sectoral focus: digital energy and utilities, smart cities & enterprises and green mobility.
  algoWatt was born from the merger of TerniEnergia, a leading company in the renewable energy and environmental industry, and Softeco, an IT solutions provider with over 40 years of experience for customers operating in the energy and industrial sectors. and transport.

• TU Delft – Delft University of Technology (Netherlands). Through its research, the Department of Design Engineering (DE) at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) aims to explore novel product technological affordances, develop implementation principles, and potential innovative application domains for smart consumer durables relying on ubiquitous and cyber-physical technologies. The research projects conducted on staff, Ph.D. and M.Sc. levels address both disciplinary insight in exploring technological affordances and operative knowledge for integration of technologies and innovating smart and ubiquitous computing technologies-based products and product-services. The IDE Faculty at TU Delft is one of the oldest and largest in the world; it has a leading role in the development of the discipline. Over 5,000 engineers graduated from the faculty since it was founded in 1969. The faculty is also leading in the field of design research, with more than 100 researchers. The conducted research is user-centred and design-driven. The expected project results support DE’s ultimate objective of fulfilling joint social, economic and sustainability demands. The resulting methods and tools will strengthen DE’s abilities to support designers and companies in successfully developing user-centred products in which the added value of ubiquitous computing and cyber-physical system technology are optimally exploited.

• UBITECH (Greece). UBITECH is a leading, highly innovative company, established to provide leading edge intelligent technical solutions and consulting services to businesses, organizations and government in order to allow the efficient and effective access and communication with various heterogeneous information and services, anytime and anywhere. UBITECH enables real-time valid information processing and decision-making, the realization of intelligent business environments, and B2B and B2C transactions by providing high added-value business –oriented and –based solutions. With regard to European and national co-funded research initiatives, UBITECH has successfully participated and is currently involved in the following projects: a) the SEMANTIX Eurostars project (implementing the semantic infrastructure of the semantic interoperability platform); b) the GRANATUM ICT, Linked2Safety ICT and Linked2Media Research for SMEs Associations projects wherein UBITECH participates as integrator and intends to work in the application of Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies, as well as in the creation of social collaborative working environments; c) the DCA CIP-PSP project wherein UBITECH participates as technology provider and is going to develop a semantic annotator for digital cultural content metadata; and d) the LinkedDesign FoF-ICT Integrated Project, wherein UBITECH actively participates and leads semantic, interoperability and software engineering-related activities.

• Mews Partners (France). Mews Partners is an independent management consulting firm that has been dedicated to the improvement of its customers’ operational performance for the past 20 years. Mews Partners combines value chain expertise (Innovation, R&D, MRO and Services, Management), methodology (Lean Transformation, IT Governance) and human values (customer proximity, team spirit) to deliver tangible results. Mews Partners has developed a recognized expertise on PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) & Lean Engineering / Lean Product Development. Mews Partners has a wide knowledge of several industrial sectors: Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Energy & Utilities, Industrial equipment, Retail & Consumer Goods. Mews Partners is an independent management consulting firm of around 80 consultants dedicated to the improvement of operational excellence. The company has grown steadily since its creation in 1992 and had a turnover of 15 M€ in 2015. Throughout its growth, our firm has always kept a focus on a fundamental value: team-spirit, whether internally between coworkers, or externally in our relationships with our customers. Today they are as appreciative as we are of this trademark, which facilitates the establishment of trusting relationships, strong commitment to recommended changes, and lasting involvement in the implementation efforts. Mews Partners was a partner in European & French Research Projects: (1) ENHANCE, responsible for the data management task; (2) CRESCENDO & SIMID, responsible of semantic technologies implementations.40TBased on these experiences, Mews Partners is developing a software prototype 40TsDMP® P40T (for semantic Data Management) implementing semantic technologies to model, analyse and retrieve qualified, fit-for-purpose data. Mews Partners proposes also an offer for innovation excellence: (1) Innovation strategy : how to anticipate future evolution of technologies and markets and succeed with disruptive projects by creating and capturing value; (2) Innovation management : how to improve the innovation process to make it robust and repeatable.