EU manufacturing is constantly becoming “more productive with less”, both in terms of material usage and energy consumption.

The dynamics of global markets demand shorter product lifecycles and higher product variety, impacted by an increased volatility in demand.

Traditional manufacturing systems are unsuitable to meet the new “think small” paradigm. They enable flexibility but at high operational complexity and for high volume operations to get lower cost production.

To create resilient factories and supply chains, it is mandatory to reduce complexity and cost of plug & produce modular manufacturing.

MODUL4R envisions reliable, maintainable, affordable, (re)usable, and changeable SME-friendly autonomous modular factories and supply chains, able to manufacture new product in low-volumes and rapidly respond to unexpected events as well as the overall supply chain.

MODUL4R proposes a holistic framework applicable both to new and existing manufacturing lines to achieve flexibility, rapid responsiveness, and sustainability. MODUL4R will be demonstrated in specialized mould manufacturing for the automotive sector, CPPS for flexible & modular assembly of PCBs, and tools manufacturing for the aerospace.

MODUL4R focuses on 4 pillars, offering hardware and software components:

• PILLAR 1: Resilience against changes in customer and societal demands and disruption on the supply chain.
• PILLAR 2: Modular technologies for flexible manufacturing operations.
• PILLAR 3: Simulation and interfaces to the Industrial Metaverse.
• PILLAR 4: Human centred technologies and upskilling.

The impact of MODUL4R for the EU Manufacturing industry, but also the society itself, can be summarised as follows:

• process ramp-up time (>20%);
• speed in product shifting (>29%);
• yield & CpK (>12% & >21%);
• OEE (>21%);
• part cost reduction (>15%) with over 41 MEUR ROI for the consortium;
• 408 new jobs;
• help industry to reduce Energy consumption (>30%) through Automation of processes (>25%).