Eur3ka – Manufacturing as a Service for fast pandemic reaction

Short description of the project

In the early 2020s the COVID-19 outbreak created a massive global need for vital medical equipment. Critical shortages of medical equipment such as ventilators or protective clothing emerged. Supply chains were additionally interrupted by export restrictions. Flexible supply chains can avoid such a shortage and can enable new suppliers to be integrated quickly e.g. in the case of an international crisis. One aspect of flexible supply chains is the repurposing of existing production capabilities to compensate the loss of suppliers. The EU funded project Eur3ka will focus on increasing the resilience of medical supply chains.

Project objectives

The overall project goal is to create a federated digital infrastructure that could serve as the technology backbone for building flexible supply chains quickly and efficiently. The Smart Factory Web (SFW) is an already existing platform where companies can register their capabilities and products. In this project, the SFW will be extended by external services for smart matching of medical product manufacturing demands and production capabilities by considering sensitive data such as capacity, workload, etc.. To achieve this, the I4.0 technologies of Digital Twins and International Data Space (IDS) connectors will be used.

Project outcome

The project is currently in its initial phase. Domain experts are being consulted to develop suitable use cases. At the same time, existing components from the various partners are being collected and reviewed to ensure that the project vision can be achieved. (Status: January 2021)