Digital technologies and sustainability

Digital Information and communication technologies (ICT) are keys to manufacturing competence, competitiveness and jobs of modern industrialised countries. The trend is towards more customised, intelligent and networked products and systems, integrating intelligence in miniaturised smart product embedded information devices (PEID), such as RFID tags, embedded systems (including sensors) and standards. On the other hand, the overall goal of sustainable manufacturing is to obtain a holistic view of products’ lifecycle in the manufacturing industry and optimise the life-cycle of product-service systems. In the coming years, the use of PEIDs will be extended from the current use in identification and logistics applications to a wider pallet of applications for manufacturing including real time visualisation and decision making. These wider applications include the involvement of consumers and users together with producers and service providers, beyond the traditional use of current product life-cycle management (PLM) solutions.

Participants:
Prof. Dimitrios Kyritsis, ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing, EPFL, Switzerland,

Prof. Dr. Dimitris Kiritsis is Faculty Member at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering of the School of Engineering of EPFL, Switzerland, where he is leading a research group on ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing. His research interests are Closed Loop Lifecycle Management, IoT, Semantic Technologies and Data Analytics for Engineering Applications. He served also as Guest Professor at the IMS Center of the University of Cincinnati, and Invited Professor at the University of Technology of Compiègne, the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard and at ParisTech ENSAM Paris. Prof. Kiritsis is actively involved in EU research programs in the area of Factories of the Future and Enabling ICT for Sustainable Manufacturing. He has more than 200 publications. Since September 2013 Dimitris is Chair of IFIP WG5.7 – Advanced Production Management Systems and member of the Advisory Group of the European Council on Leadership on Enabling Industrial Technologies – AG LEIT-NMBP. He is also founding fellow member of the International Society for Engineering Asset Management (ISEAM), of various international scientific communities in his area of interests including EFFRA and among the initiators of the IOF (Industrial Ontologies Foundry).