Data Space for Manufacturing (deployment)

Outcomes and deliverables

The two selected actions will deploy two data spaces for the manufacturing industry at scale, continuing to be available after the end of the project, that will build on and be integrated with the data space technical infrastructure, delivering industrial data sharing among manufacturing companies and with (service) providers, thanks to agreements on common rules for access to data and fair compensation. The solutions must be characterized by a high degree of user-orientation in terms of trustworthiness, data sovereignty of the companies and manageability. Particularly SMEs will benefit from larger sets of industrial data to broaden their offers in terms of products and services, with the support of the European Digital Innovation Hubs.

Actions will address one of the following expected outcomes:

• Supply chain operations are more flexible, circular, effective and efficient, with reduced inventory levels, more timely deliveries between organisations, better resilience to interruptions of delivery channels, and reduced costs.
• Maintenance operations are better timed, with reduced overall downtimes and maintenance costs, extended machine usage periods, new service models, and improved future machine designs.

As part of the actions addressing one of the expected outcomes above, the organisation(s) operating the data spaces will deliver good practices for data sharing agreements such as code of conduct and contract template enabling such a degree of trust that brings together a sizeable number of manufacturing companies.

Furthermore, stakeholders in these actions have to agree on approaches and ideas for circularity, on how to improve design, reuse, repair, remanufacturing, recycling, and environmental impact by data sharing and demonstrate benefits of the first generation of the product passports for all involved stakeholders as well as for sustainability. Interoperability of data within this data space will be designed such that cross-sectoral interoperability can be easily achieved in the future.

Data sharing among manufacturing companies and with (service) providers will be increased by the deployment of two data spaces of the manufacturing industry, which will demonstrate how sharing industrial data improves company operations (1) across supply chains and (2) using deep industrial data within production environments, enhances business opportunities for industrial data value added services, and supports the transition towards a circular economy.

Manufacturing data spaces and their AI-based analytics and optimisation applications can influence company-internal processes as well as processes across organisations. On the basis of the preparatory actions, the main objective is to deploy two operational data spaces across value chains in the manufacturing sector, which enable companies in different user roles (e.g. supplier, client, service provider) to interact with large amounts of industrial data across their organisational borders. The first data space will address agile supply chain management and execution across a large set of supply chain stakeholders, and the second one dynamic asset management and predictive/prescriptive maintenance, unlocking deep industrial data for trustworthy and reliable value-added services by parties outside a production site, such as machine tool manufacturer and integrator, improving production line operations.

The action calls for the deployment of two operational data spaces of the manufacturing industry, building on the results of the preparatory actions. The projects should have sufficient activities to lead to sustainability at the end of the action, as identified in the preparatory actions mentioned above.

Such data spaces will offer a secure and trustworthy way of making data usable between supplier and user companies on the basis of voluntary agreements. Starting from existing ‘embryonic’ data spaces with manufacturing companies, their data sharing will be completed, deepened, expanded, and/or enlarged with other organisations (e.g. reuse, repairing, remanufacturing, refurbishing or recycling companies in order to improve circularity) and gradually integrated into the Data Space Technical Infrastructure. The data spaces for manufacturing must be operated and coordinated by companies, an industrial association or a non-profit organisation demonstrating their capacity to act as trustworthy data brokers and to continue operations beyond the end of the action.

The actions need to target one of these two specific complementary data spaces for manufacturing:

• Performing agile supply chain management and execution by continuously monitoring and exchanging status data on e.g. purchase orders, sales orders, inventory levels, order progress, demand forecasts, raw materials, chemicals and energy use and supply, etc. across the value chain. End users are different tiers in a supply chain (suppliers, OEMs, and customers).
• Carrying out dynamic asset management and predictive/prescriptive maintenance by continuously monitoring and exchanging data on machine status, breakdowns, downtimes, service orders, etc. End users are machine users, machine vendors, maintenance service providers, and remanufacturers.

In addition, the actions need to address the following mandatory activities:

• Bringing together relevant stakeholders to industrial data agreement(s) on design, reuse, recycling, and environmental impact and indicators for continuous monitoring and exchange of data on product performance and reuse, material content and origin,, feedback to design, product recycling, product remanufacturing, etc. The work should demonstrate data-based sustainable business models and the benefits of data sharing for the organisations participating in the value chains.
• Carrying out further actions needed to effectively track and report resource use (e.g. CO₂) from a manufacturer’s perspective in going forward. Actions should preferably target data sharing for circularity in line with the Circular Economy Action plan (COM(2020) 98 final).

The actions for the deployment of these two data spaces for manufacturing will have to gradually make use and be in full compliance with the European Data Spaces Technical Framework. They can profit from and use the smart middleware platform and tools. They will also have to coordinate and collaborate with other projects participating in the deployment of the data space, the Data Spaces Support Centre and the governance body identified by the first phase in order to allow integration of existing standards and to ensure interoperability and portability across infrastructure, applications and data.

Furthermore, the actions implementing the Data Spaces for Manufacturing are encouraged to cooperate with the European Digital Innovation Hubs for a broad uptake by the industry as well as the Testing and Experimentation Facility for Manufacturing to define European test and training data sets and to provide support in their establishment.