Workshop - Preview Project EU · Promolding to install and test the PREVIEW system and decorate the facility ready for the guests. Stand graphics previously used at exhibitions were

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Workshop 23rd November 2017

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The PREVIEW consortium hosted a workshop to demonstrate the innovations

and benefits of PREVIEW to the industry.

This one day event took place on 23rd November 2017 at Promolding in The

Hague, The Netherlands.

This report gives details about the workshop; from the preparation to the main

event.

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Organisation

Guests People in the injection moulding industry were the main target audience for the PREVIEW

workshop. This included machine manufacturers, equipment manufacturers, injection

moulding companies and clients, European Commission platforms, institutions, networks

and trade magazines.

Registration

A registration form was created using Google Forms to allow people to register to attend

the workshop. This enabled the consortium to monitor the prospective attendees. The

registration form could be accessed from the homepage of the PREVIEW website.

Figure 1: Link to the registration form on the PREVIEW website

Invitations

All partners in the PREVIEW consortium directly invited guests to attend the workshop.

Some specific actions are detailed below.

Smithers Rapra sent an email invitation to 285 recipients (Figure 2). These were people

who had shown an interest in previous plastics related research projects that Smithers

Rapra have been involved in. The recipients were based in the Netherlands, Belgium and

Luxembourg; countries close to the workshop.

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This invitation was also sent to the 15

people who had registered to the PREVIEW

website mailing list.

The email invitation explained the purpose

of the workshop and included the proposed

agenda for the day. It contained links to the

registration page, PREVIEW website,

YouTube and the social media channels;

Twitter and LinkedIn.

Three PREVIEW end users; MPT Plastica,

Promolding and Proform personally invited

their customers.

Promolding also invited equipment

suppliers, trade organisations and trade

magazines for further dissemination.

Figure 2: Workshop email invitation

Advertisement

The workshop was advertised widely in

many ways to ensure a large audience was

reached.

News articles were written by the

consortium and uploaded to their company

websites. They promoted the workshop

and gave details on registration.

PREVIEW and the PREVIEW partners’ social

media channels were used extensively in

the run up to the workshop, including

during the registration process to invite

people to attend.

Figure 3: Advertisement on Promolding website

Figure 4: Advertisement on Smithers Rapra website

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Figure 5: Social media - Twitter and LinkedIn advertisement

In the three months leading up to the workshop the PREVIEW consortium attended a

number of exhibitions related to plastics manufacturing and Industry 4.0/smart

manufacturing. At Interplas and Advanced Engineering, both held in the UK, presentations

were given by members of the PREVIEW consortium who took the opportunity to publicise

the workshop to the audiences. A news article promoting the workshop was also uploaded

to the Advanced Engineering website. More information about PREVIEW’s attendance to

these exhibitions can be found on page 13.

Figure 6: Exhibition presentations promoting the workshop

Once the guests registered to attend the workshop they received a confirmation email with a

document explaining more about PREVIEW, the agenda for the day and useful information

such as transport and accommodation options.

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Preparation

PREVIEW end user Promolding was chosen as the location for the workshop. Their new

facility was ideal in providing the needs of the workshop including the size, space and location

of the factory floor and meeting rooms.

To prepare for the workshop, Promolding, Eurecat and Smithers Rapra had weekly meetings

prior to the event. This ensured the workshop was well prepared for, enabling it to run as

smoothly and efficiently as possible. The below chart indicates the time spent during this

organisational stage.

Set Up

During the week leading up to the workshop, members of the consortium arrived at

Promolding to install and test the PREVIEW system and decorate the facility ready for the

guests. Stand graphics previously used at exhibitions were installed and on display along

with the physical components of the PREVIEW system and the PREVIEW marketing material.

Figure 7: Gantt chart showing the workshop preparation

13-Sep-17 06-Oct-17 30-Oct-17 22-Nov-17

Agree date

Decide specific guests to invite

Finalise agenda

Registration of attendees

Invite guests

Social media advertisement

Arrange equiptment needed

Organise marketing material

Name badges designed and printed

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In the meeting room where the presentations took place two TV screens were on display.

One to show the presentations and the second to enable attendees to follow the

performance of the PREVIEW system running in the production floor by visualising in real-

time useful process information provided by the Data Acquisition System, the topology

and the quality of transmissions of the PREVIEW wireless network and setup predictions

provided by the Advanced Predictive System.

A bag of marketing material and

promotional products was placed on

each chair for the guests to take away

and continue their exposure to

PREVIEW. These contained the PREVIEW

marketing material including the tri-fold,

postcard and also the new final PREVIEW

brochure which was purposely designed

and printed in time for this workshop.

The bag also contained material from

the PREVIEW partners.

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The Workshop

Attendees

Guests

The PREVIEW workshop attracted 23 guests from machine manufacturers, equipment

manufacturers, peripherals suppliers, research institutes, universities, end-users, branch

organisations and publishers. The attendees included technical sales, CEOs, researchers and

managers; those with decision making authority. The countries represented were Austria,

Spain, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Norway and The Netherlands. Some notable companies in

attendance are listed below.

Machine Manufacturers - Arburg, Engel

Equipment Manufacturers - Priamus, Kistler, Bosch Gasoline Systems

Research - TNO, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Norwegian

University of Science and Technology

Publishers - River Publishers

European Factories of the Future Research Association (EFFRA)

The Dutch Federation of Rubber and Plastics Industry NRK

European Plastics Converters (EuPC)

The PREVIEW Consortium

Representatives from all PREVIEW partners were in attendance at the workshop either in

presenting or supporting roles.

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Table 1: PREVIEW workshop agenda

Time Topic Presenter

10:00 Welcome and registration

10:30 Welcome to Promolding Jac Gofers - CEO Menco Verduin - Managing Director

10:45 The era of digitalisation and smart manufacturing: in-troducing PREVIEW, a cyber-physical system for opti-mising injection moulding

Jesús Pablo González Villodres

11:15 Digital Manufacturing for ConnectedFactories CSA Chris Decubber

11:30 “The challenges of data acquisition in injection mould-ing: the DAS module”

Xavier Rubiralta

12:00 “Novel transmission protocols: featuring a wireless communication network”

Stefan Dietzel

12:30 Lunch break

13:30 “To fit or not to fit? That is the question: presenting the APS, an Advanced Predictive System for algorithmic analysis of injection moulding data”

Francesc Bonada Bo

14:00 “Not just a simple app, but a user-friendly Location Based Content Delivery solution”

Ismail El Haloui

14:45 Concluding remarks and networking

16:00 Farewell from Promolding

Agenda

Table 1 shows the agenda of the workshop. The four subsystems of PREVIEW; Data

Acquisition System (DAS), Robust Wireless Communication, Advanced Predictive System

(APS) and Location Based Content Delivery (LBCD) were the main focus of the day with both

presentations and demonstrations used to explain these. The dark blue shading in the table

indicates the subsystems that had technical sessions and the light blue shading indicates the

subsystems with both technical and practical sessions.

PREVIEW Overview - Jesús Pablo González, Eurecat Centre Tecnològic de

Catalunya

Project manager Jesús Pablo

González, gave the first

presentation of the day with a

general overview of the

PREVIEW system, an

introduction to the project

partners and an explanation of

the days agenda.

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Realising Europe’s Industrial Potential - Chris Decubber, EFFRA

The PREVIEW consortium were pleased to welcome to the workshop Chris Decubber from

the European Factories of the Future Research Association (EFFRA). He gave a presentation

titled Realising Europe’s Industrial Potential.

Data Acquisition System - Xavier Rubiralta Alcañiz, Plastia

Xavier Rubiralta gave the first presentation of the PREVIEW subsystems with his

explanation of the Data Acquisition System (DAS) including it’s aim and a description of the

physical components.

Figure 8: Chris Decubber, EFFRA

Robust Wireless Communication - Dr. Stefan Dietzel, Humboldt-

Universität zu Berlin

Stefan Dietzel from PREVIEW partner UBER presented PREVIEW’s robust wireless

communication including it’s 3 main goals; autonomous, robust and fair. During his

presentation, Stefan connected a wireless node to the system. Minutes later this

additional node could be seen on the TV screen which showed the topology and the

quality of transmissions of the PREVIEW wireless network.

Figure 9: Presentation and demonstration of the DAS

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Advanced Predictive System - Francesc Bonada, Eurecat Centre Tecnològic

de Catalunya

Francesc Bonada gave an interactive presentation about the APS. On the TV screen attendees

could see the Setup Predictive System providing a recommendation to tune key parameters

of the production process seconds after Francesc asked a worker on the production floor to

change a key parameter.

After the DAS and Robust Wireless Communication presentations, the guests were taken to

the production floor for a demonstration of the DAS, were shown the location of the wireless

nodes, and any questions so far were answered by the PREVIEW consortium (Figure 9).

Figure 10: Dr. Stefan Dietzel, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Figure 11: Francesc Bonada, Eurecat Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya

Location Based Content Delivery - Ismail El Haloui, Eurecat Centre

Tecnològic de Catalunya

Ismail’s presentation explained the LBCD’s main features; proximity detection, real-time

positioning and geofencing. The Demonstration of the PREVIEW App video was shown to the

guests before they were invited down to the production floor to see the app in action. Both

geofencing and proximity detection were demonstrated in memorable ways, the latter by

the video appearing on the app when the user stood in close proximity to a specific beacon.

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Feedback Session

The final part of the workshop involved a feedback session to gather the guests opinions on

the PREVIEW system. In small groups, each lead by a member of the PREVIEW consortium,

the guests shared and discussed the key advantages of the system along with their

suggestions. The data gathered in this session will be used effectively by the consortium.

Figure 12: Demonstration of the LBCD subsystem

The successful workshop disseminated PREVIEW to key industrial stakeholders who were very

interested to learn about the system as a whole, the characteristics of the subsystems and the

many benefits of PREVIEW. Throughout the day the PREVIEW Twitter account was used to

publicise the event with live updates (see images below). The subsystem presentations given

at the workshop will be available on the project website to continue the knowledge transfer

of PREVIEW to people who were unable to attend the workshop.

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Seminars, Workshops and Exhibitions

Alongside the PREVIEW workshop held at Promolding a series of presentations and interactive

demonstrations were given at large exhibitions to widely disseminate the project to industry

professionals within the polymer and smart manufacturing industries.

Interplas

Interplas represents the UK's leading plastics industry event, the only event to cover all of the

manufacturing processes, technologies and services essential to the plastics sector.

For over sixty years, Interplas has been the key show for more than 400 exhibitors to present

solutions, products, machines and ideas to the UK manufacturing industry. Interplas is a forum

where innovations in plastics technology are presented to an audience eager to seek solutions

to their challenges.

Held triennially, the three-day event is held in Hall 4 of Birmingham’s NEC arena, a venue

chosen for its central location and excellent transport links. This year, the show was on the

26th, 27th and 28th of September and was expected to attract some 12,000 visitors, covering

all areas of the plastics manufacturing – including design and prototyping, materials, injection

moulding machinery, extrusion machinery, thermoforming machinery, printing & decorating,

automation & robotics, recycling, process control & sensing, test & measurement, QA & QC

equipment, mould making, temperature control, end of line/assembly, contract manufacturing.

The event represented the ideal place to exhibit the PREVIEW project.

Additionally, for the 2017 edition, Interplas hosted an ‘Introducing Stage’ which offered quick-

fire presentations highlighting the most innovative ideas, technologies and processes conducive

to efficiency, productivity and success within targeted business. In this context, Smithers Rapra

had the opportunity to give a 20 min oral presentation on the PREVIEW system.

Through the three-day event, the PREVIEW consortium was represented by Smithers Rapra at

the stand G52 (4×4 meters stand), see figure 13, 14 and 15.

Figure 13: Interplas 2017 floorplan with the PREVIEW stand at G52

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Figure 15: PREVIEW stand at Interplas 2017

Prior to and during these Interplas days, the consortium widely promoted the presence of

PREVIEW at the show in major social media such as Twitter (Figure 16), LinkedIn (Figure 17)

and the PREVIEW website. Additionally, the attendance of the PREVIEW team was directly

disseminated through Interplas media such as the website and brochures (Figure 18).

Figure 14: PREVIEW stand layout at Interplas 2017

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Figure 16: Examples of Tweets sent before and during Interplas 2017

Figure 17: Examples of posts released on Linkedin before and during Interplas 2017

Figure 18: PREVIEW dissemination in Interplas brochure

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The PREVIEW stand successfully attracted a large number of visitors such as: MKM Extrusions

Limited, Fern Plastic Products Limited, Unilever UK, TSM Control System, Greentech Plastics,

Tensar, Reform Plastics and many others throughout the three days of the event. The visitors

were eagerly interested to know about the whole PREVIEW system, its working principles, the

characteristics of each sub-system, economic benefits, stability of the system in the industrial

environment etc. To make the PREVIEW system easily understandable and representable to the

visitors, a simpler version of the Data Acquisition System (DAS) was developed. The visitors

could inflate a football with a bicycle pump equipped with a pressure sensor and follow in real-

time the evolution of the pressure with a simplified Data Acquisition System, see Figure 19.

Figure 19 : Visitor testing the simplified version of the DAS

at Interplas 2017

Figure 20: LBCD deployment at Interplas 2017

Additionally, a tailored version of the

Location Based Content Delivery (LBCD)

system was also presented to the visitors,

see Figure 20. With the combination of two

Low Energy Bluetooth beacons installed on

the stand and the PREVIEW mobile app

running on a tablet, the visitors could use

the proximity detection feature of the LBCD

and have access on the mobile device to the

process information provided by the

PREVIEW system such as alerts, setup

predictions, production and quality control

and documentation about the PREVIEW

project. The visitors found it easy to operate

and considered it innovative, advanced and

very comprehensive to monitor and

optimise the whole production process.

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To support the exploitation and dissemination of PREVIEW, and to provide visitors with

information to take away with them, postcards and trifold brochures were available on the

stand. In addition, PREVIEW mint cards were given away as a reminder to visitors of the project

(Figure 21).

Figure 21: PREVIEW promotional materials at Interplas 2017

Finally on the 28th of September, to make the technical information of the PREVIEW project

more accessible to all of the participants, exhibitors and speakers at Interplas, Dr Julien Loste,

consultant at Smithers Rapra, gave a presentation on ‘Merging Smart Factories with High

Volume Manufacturing’ (Figure 22). He started by describing the problems faced in the

injection moulding industry to improve productivity and the need to monitor the injection

moulding process. Then, he highlighted how the PREVIEW system enables plastic moulders and

manufacturers to close this gap by incorporating cavity sensors and enabling the digitalisation

of cavity and machine process parameters. He explained how it is possible to correct any

process inconsistencies by using the advanced predictive system that analyses and suggests

injection moulding machine parameters to the operator to ensure the best part quality. Finally,

he described how this data transmission process is possible due to an efficient, novel and

robust wireless network protocol that overcomes the usual difficulties encountered in a large

industrial environment (impracticality of cables and interferences).

Figure 22: : Dr Julien Loste, Consultant at Smithers Rapra, delivering a presentation on PREVIEW system at Interplas 2017

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Advanced Engineering

Launched in 2009 with just 80 exhibitors and 1200 attendees, Advanced Engineering has

grown to become the UK’s largest annual meeting of advanced engineering professionals

and supply chain organisations (Imeche).

This year, the event was held at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC), in Birmingham on

the 1st and 2nd of November 2017. The show was composed of over 700 exhibitors

ranging from the transport, machining, lamination, materials development, and most

sectors related to industrial manufacturing. The exhibition was filled with innovative

start-ups (i.e. Disruptive Technologies AS) as well as renowned industrial giants (i.e.

Autodesk, Cannon, HP). The edition held in 2015, was reported to have attracted over

13,000 participants throughout the 2-day attendance. 82% of the visitors were of

managerial nature, and had the administrative authority to influence over company

acquisition decisions (Engineering). The topics of the event were very varied and well-

suited to incorporate latest developments and innovations within the smart

manufacturing and digitalisation trends of the industry, such as:

Materials and processing technologies

Testing and inspection

Surface finishing techniques

Driverless vehicle technology

Technology transfer

In its 2017 edition the event expected to have:

Over 200 conference sessions

Six forums

1000s of products

700 leading exhibitors

More than 1000 of industry professionals

Some of the conference topics were: aero engineering, composites engineering,

automotive engineering, performance metals engineering, and connected

manufacturing which is where PREVIEW featured a 20 minute oral presentation.

Smithers Rapra was chosen as the leading partner for the coordination of the event,

having secured a stand (J14) for the whole duration of the exhibition (see Figure 23).

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In the weeks leading up to the event the consortium publicised their attendance on major social

media and corporative websites to increase awareness (Figure 24).

Figure 23: PREVIEW stand at Advanced Engineering 2017

Figure 24: Social media advertisement for Advanced Engineering 2017

On the day of the event, various interactive activities to show the principle of the PREVIEW

system were used to entertain and capture the attention of the participants. These followed

upon the analogies used at Interplas, where the process for monitoring the injection

moulding pressure was exemplified with the use of a pump, a football and a customised

software application. In Figure 25, one of the attendees is seen interacting with this

demonstrator.

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Figure 25: Attendee interacting with the pump to “PREVIEW” the pressure via a customised DAS

Similarly, the team at Eurecat were

able to customise a special version of

the LBCD application to showcase the

setup predictive system and

production control functionalities of

the APS to the visitors. In Figure 26, a

screen shot of the Advanced

Engineering floorplan is presented

where the location of the PREVIEW

stand has been marked for

informative purposes.

Figure 26: LBCD customised app showing Advanced Engineering floorplan

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On the 2nd day of the event, the PREVIEW team presented a talk entitled “PREVIEW:

INNOVATING INJECTION MOULDING THROUGH CYBER PHYSICAL SYSTEMS”, at the

connected manufacturing forum (Figure 27). The talk provided an overview of the PREVIEW

system, as well as detailing each one of its composing subsystems. The results obtained

during the summer demos held at each one of the end-users’ facilities were also presented

for discussion with the attendees.

Figure 27: PREVIEW’s presentation at the Connected Manufacturing Forum in the Advanced Engineering event

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Smart Factory Expo

The Smart Factory Expo is the showcase for the latest advanced technologies and systems

in manufacturing agility, innovation and thinking and is considered as the UK’s biggest

digital manufacturing show for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). This expo is run by

the Manufacturer Magazine in partnership with government, industry and world class

technical solutions developers. It provides speakers, exhibitors and senior executives and

decision makers within manufacturing businesses with a platform to discuss, network,

collaborate, source and grow in the age of industrial digitalisation and revolution.

Figure 28: The PREVIEW system was represented by Smithers Rapra at the Innovation Alley of the Smart Factory Expo

This year, the event was held at the Exhibition Centre, Liverpool on the 15th and 16th

of November 2017. Liverpool city region is one of the UK’s largest manufacturing

regions and known to be a hotbed of Industry 4.0 practice. More than 4000

manufacturers and 100 exhibitors from renowned companies such as Sony UK, Rolls

Royce, Siemens, Dell EMC, BAE Systems, GlaxoSmithKline etc. and innovative SMEs and

manufacturing start-ups participated in this event. The two-day event facilitated the

following six zones:

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Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)

Additive Manufacturing

Servitization

Artificial Intelligence

Automation and Robotics

Machine to Machine (M2M)

Each Technology Zone had its own dedicated Solutions Theatre which provided

opportunities for the exhibitors to engage and share the manufacturing knowledge

directly with attendees in their respective business sectors. Over two days, more than

120 top tier speakers from government, industrial sectors and academia came together

to speak their expertise and discuss the present and future trends of the industrial

manufacturing sectors.

An Innovation Alley was included this year for the first time in the Smart Factory Expo. It

was a dedicated densely-packed networking space to accommodate 48 established

companies and promising manufacturing tech start-ups to showcase their products and

innovations to the visitors from their own micro booths (a concentrated dose of ideas,

energy and opportunity). For presenting the PREVIEW system, Smithers Rapra hosted a

stand in the Innovation Alley over the two-day event (Figure 28).

Figure 29: Attendees at the Smart Factory Expo were discussing and receiving details about the PREVIEW system

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During the event, various activities such as distributing PREVIEW brochures and cards

(Figure 30) and showing the PREVIEW videos (Figure 31) were carried out to interact and

describe the system with details of each subsystem to the visitors of the event.

Figure 30: Dissemination and promotional material on display at the Smart Factory Expo

Figure 31: PREVIEW videos were shown at the Smart Factory Expo

Commercial and environmental benefits of using the PREVIEW cyber physical system for

the smart monitoring, prediction and optimisation of the injection moulding process

were presented properly to the interested participants (Figure 29), and a large number

of visitors expressed their interest to know more about the system, particularly the Data

Acquisition System and Advanced Predictive System.

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Bibliography

Engineering, A. (n.d.). Advanced Engineering 2016. Retrieved 10 24, 2017, from http://

www.easyfairs.com/events_216/advanced-engineering-2016_83352/advanced-

engineering-2016_84103/whats-on_84127/2015-show-review_86407/

Imeche. (n.d.). Events. Retrieved 10 24, 2017, from http://events.imeche.org/ViewEvent?

code=TLE6438

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www.preview-project.eu @EU_PREVIEW PREVIEW group PREVIEW

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 636892.