The vision of the Transparency project

Enabling European manufacturers to create a knowledge-based collaboration with end-users and component suppliers for the design and operation of machine tools. Ultimately, TRANSPARENCY will enable stakeholders to gain a competitive advantage through collaborative design and the sharing of operational knowledge throughout the lifecycle of the machine tool.

Objectives of the project

Transparency aims to create an optimal knowledge management. It does this by integrating engineering requirements, design, manufacturing, operation and sales aspects of machine tool life.

Transparency also sets itself further targets:

• To improve the design process for special machine tools
• To enhance the exchange of knowledge between design and operation
• To improve the quality of cost and performance estimates for the whole life cycle of machine tools

Technical breakthrough

• Transparency provides a distributed development environment based on semantic middleware.
• Active elements that carry design and operational knowledge and that can also be used to gather operational experience
• A flexible structure to represent the knowledge base used in the machine tool industry
• A flexible design methodology based on knowledge covering the machine tool life cycle
• Modern tools that allow accurate price calculation and performance estimation

The expected impacts:

The technical innovations of the project will achieve the following results:

• More optimal component selection less life cycle performance and overall asset utilisation (OEE) data evaluation
• Improved efficiency management of machine tools and parts
• Active components provide useful operational knowledge
• The design process becomes more efficient and transparent
• The percentage of recycled components approaches 100%