Digitalized and optimized production planning for energy-efficient production (PREFER)

Purpose and goal:

Optimal production planning is one of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks for many production experts, especially in environments where humans, robots, and machines work independently or collaboratively. Therefore, it is crucial to equip manufacturers with a digital decision support tool to plan their production efficiently. This project aims to develop an optimization tool to assist production planners in determining the optimal production sequence and assigning tasks and resources to workstations.

Expected results and effects:

The PREFER project will influence the production process by improving resource efficiency, creating robust and efficient production, and smart production planning. The outcomes of the project are expected to contribute to the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry in four ways: (1) Better balance at workstations which leads to an increase in production or decrease in time/cost, (2) Optimal usage of machines which leads to energy saving, (3) Swift production planning using a digital tool, (4) Sustainable production through improvements in energy consumption and lead time.

Approach and implementation:

The project consortium includes three partners: (i) the University of Skövde as the project coordinator and the academic partner of the project (ii) Volvo Trucks and Daloc AB as the industrial partners that will support the project by providing use cases and involvement in various project activities. The project has been planned for over three years and consists of five work packages, three technical and two general work packages.

The solution and tools developed within the project will be tested and verified by industrial demonstrators.