Ambient Intelligence (AmI) Technology as Enabler for Improvement
The basic assumption of AMI-4-SME is that the realisation of new AmI based environments will allow to create new needs and potentials to radically re-organise the work in industry, bringing considerable benefits regarding motivation of employees, flexibility, productivity, cost efficiency, performance and robustness, and, therefore, providing a breakthrough in the competitiveness of European SMEs.
Therefore, AMI-4-SME aims at proposing a new scheme for systemic innovation of industrial working environments in SMEs by deploying AmI potentials in daily operation. The RTD activities will consist in the development and validation of new models of business processes for flexible manufacturing, specifically tailored to the needs of SMEs, based on "Ambient Intelligence philosophy" - Asking the question: What can be achieved by AmI Technology in SME reality?
To ensure practical relevance of project results and creating real industrial experiences, 2 paradigmatic and typical scenarios were selected for application of AmI technology and systemic innovation in order to assure high reusability and adaptability of the envisaged solutions for SMEs:
- Advanced manufacturing control, using wireless multi-modal services and speech recognition systems (SRS) for dynamic reconfiguration of (geographically) distributed assembly and manufacturing processes and lines;
- Innovative approaches for maintenance via mobile wireless devices and/or smart tags in combination with multi-modal services and SRS facilitating multi-stakeholder involvement.
Based on these scenarios, basic reusable prototype solutions will be developed, facilitating the AmI implementation in manufacturing environments for the SME type customers as well as preparing the market for AmI vendors. To enable and coach SMEs in how to realise "technology enabled systemic innovation of industrial environments and organisation of work", a methodology was developed, delivering guidelines and easy applicable tools appropriate for SMEs.
Moreover, the focus on the human actor requires to consider heterogeneous cultural behaviour and environments. Therefore, partners from Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain are involved in the project. Presenting required competencies from RTD, ICT development and industrial SMEs.