Open Dynamic Manufacturing Operating System for Smart Plug-and-Produce Automation Components (openMOS)

Aim of research project

The motivation for the openMOS project is for the European Manufacturing Industry to become increasingly agile in order to compete in the global economy. OEMs need to be able to produce premium quality on demand. openMOS aims to develop of a common, openly accessible plug-and-produce (P&P) system platform which allows all stakeholders in the automation system value chain to come together and jointly develop and exploit solutions. Hence, the openMOS project is proposing to integrate new plug-and-produce system concepts which have emerged in recent years, with well-established industrial-relevant technology platforms.

How this feeds into the research group

This project is seen to contribute to the foundations required for the advent of Industry 4.0. In fact the success of the new digital revolution will require the existence of tested and industrial relevant cyber-physical-systems that are able to deliver performances comparable to current systems. Ultimately the aim is to deliver system agility without compromising on system performance.

Project partners

  • Loughborough University
  • INTROSYS
  • MASMEC
  • Ford
  • Fortiss
  • WE
  • UNINOVA
  • ASYS Group
  • Senseair
  • KTH Vetenskap Och Konst
  • Linkoping University
  • INOTEC
  • AFAG
  • HSISMI
  • elrest
  • Electrolux

Research approach

The project developments were demonstrated in three TRL 6 demonstrators (including the Loughborough demonstrator seen in figure), three TRL 7 demonstrators, and the project results have been used in 3 external demonstrators which proved the ability to deploy this solution to other systems. 

Reasearch outcomes

The main Project Research Outcomes was an open source middleware that ensured:

  • Agility and resilience without compromising performance.
  • Open, extendable and adaptable MOS with support for multiple technology stacks.
  • Support for integration of legacy system.
  • Extendable Common Semantic Model (AML) using Skill concept
  • Plug-and-produce across all levels of granularity

Sponsors

This project was supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.

"This project provided the most exciting results in the use of the plug-and-produce concept as the proposed solution was able to deliver on dynamic system changes, without compromising on the system performance."