XPRESS was one of the big collaborative projects of the European Union in the area of flexible production. Current approaches in flexible production are either concentrated on flexible concepts on the organisational level or have the disadvantage that the implementation of the methods demand a totally new production line. The approach followed by XPRESS, however, integrated the complete process chain from the production planning to the assembly and finally the quality assurance of the produced/assembled products and the reusability.
Less costs and time are needed for the planning, constructing, setting up and testing of a new assembly/ production line by providing a knowledge base tool for production configuration as well as multi-variant production by having flexible and dynamic production systems.
For that reason, XPRESS significantly contributed to the concept of the factory of the future, being able to anticipate and to respond to rapidly changing consumer needs, producing high-quality products in adequate quantities while reducing costs and increasing reusability.
Project duration: 2007 – 2011