EuProGigant stands for “European Production Giganet for calamity avoiding self-orchestration of the value chain and learning ecosystems“, the binational research project for smart and sovereign use of data in the European manufacturing industry. The project is carried out by an Austrian-German project consortium led by TU Wien and TU Darmstadt, with the goal of building a multi-location, digitally networked production ecosystem. As a lighthouse project for the Gaia-X initiative, which strives to build an open, European data infrastructure, EuProGigant advances a resilient, data-driven, and sustainable industry in Europe. In the ecosystem, which consists of data and infrastructure ecosystems, we show how to practically realize added value for customers and manufacturing companies through value creation based on smart and sovereign use of data. This strengthens European industry and drives industry’s contribution to Europe’s sustainable development.
Project Runtime | 03/2021 – 02/2025 |
Funding Body | Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) |
Involved Partners | 12 Partners from Austria and Germany |
My Role | Deputy Project Leader |
My Project Participation | Since 02/2023 |
Objective
EuProGigant’s vision is to create a new type of interaction in both value creation and learning ecosystems. This will enable resilient, data-driven and sustainable production to regain and strengthen European leadership in the manufacturing industry.
The project seeks to contribute to a Europe in which companies work together collaboratively and consensually on the basis of shared European values and legal views across national borders. The industrial ecosystem is characterised by the self-organisation of participants, data and services (= self-orchestration) in order to mitigate threats from crisis situations (= calamity avoiding).
To achieve this, companies will operate within increasingly decentralised production infrastructures, such as manufacturing plants and computing resources that can be logged into. In the case of computing resources this will be reflected in the free choice of storage location, access rights and partnerships. Where production takes place and where data is processed and stored is completely transparent. The prerequisites for this are the above-mentioned values, primarily the GAIA-X principles of trust and transparency, interoperability and data sovereignty (more on the project’s values below). By constantly using data, albeit for a fee, companies can adapt much better to new situations, share knowledge and thus also access solutions themselves that have worked for others. The infrastructure also opens up opportunities for new business models with high value creation along the entire data value chain in parallel to the production value chains: Offering own resources such as data, smart services and ideas as digital sales assets creates an additional pillar for one’s own company besides the usual product offering. Such a broad positioning makes it easier for companies to adapt to market changes – they become faster, more adaptable and more resilient.
Goals
The overall project goal is to address key questions on the topic of smart and sovereign use of data in manufacturing:
- the identification, extraction and organization of production-relevant data;
- increasing flexibility and efficiency in production through the processing of production data (e.g. energy demand and consumption);
- ensuring reliability and availability of production data;
- the mapping of cross-border value chains.
In concrete terms, this means combining existing technologies and building a Gaia-X demonstrator in manufacturing with concrete use cases. For these use cases, we will develop innovative, data-driven business models according to Gaia-X as a best practice example for Europe. The economic application of the business models will be pursued during the duration of the project.
Central realizations:
- Machine connection and machine-oriented data processing
- Resilience in the value creation ecosystem: distributed terminals for the fulfillment of joint benefits
- Multi-cloud connectivity: collaborative condition monitoring & predictive maintenance, energy efficiency
EuProGigant shows how small and middle-sized companies can independently join the European data infrastructure via the Gaia-X Federation Services.
Project website: https://euprogigant.com