The Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation (LMS) at the University of Patras hosted the fourth Flex4Res Project General Assembly, which took place in Athens, Greece, on 15 and 16 May 2024. Around 30 representatives from the 17 partner organisations participated in the project meeting in person.

Focusing on resilience assessment

As the project approaches its halfway mark, the Flex4Res partners met to exchange updates, evaluate progress and set the roadmap for the second half of the project. Over the course of days, the agenda was packed with presentations by task leaders, creating a productive environment for knowledge exchange and networking.

Progress with the resilience assessment toolbox

The resilience assessment toolbox for the early detection of reconfiguration needs in both software and hardware aims to provide a structured approach to evaluating the resilience capability of production systems across three levels. At the micro level, the focus lies on machinery and device performance at the local or on-site scale. The meso level addresses resilience within production lines and systems at the company-wide perspective, while the macro level extends the assessment to the entire value and supply chain network. The framework encompasses both data models and software services, complemented by hardware-based novel data sources as well as action units that leverage sensors and actuators.

The main activities within this initiative include the design and development of data models tailored to resilience assessment, as well as the creation of a comprehensive toolbox that can operate effectively across the three identified production system levels.

Resilience in manufacturing – an assessment of the current situation

A highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the first results from the resilience study conducted by the project partner PTW from TU Darmstadt in collaboration with Staufen AG.

The study aimed to assess the resilience of the industrial production. A total of 116 companies from seven European countries participated in the study, sharing their views on questions such as: “How important is resilience for the success of your company?”, “How resilient would you rate production in your company?” and “Do you see a conflict between increasing resilience as a production target and other targets in your production?”.

Update: The study can be downloaded here (external link – available in German only) https://www.ptw.tu-darmstadt.de/media/fachgebietptw/dokumente_3/aktuell_2/2025_3/Studie_Resilienz_in_der_industriellen_Produktion_PTW_Staufen.pdf

What’s next?

The next steps of the project focus on deploying prototypes within the use case infrastructure, testing and refining the solutions and demonstrating their impact on the resilience in practice.

A big thank you to everyone involved for the productive meetings and warm hospitality. We look forward to the next steps and further collaboration in the Flex4Res project!