A special moment! Today on the Brainport Industries Campus the kick-off of the NXTGEN Hightech projects Autonomous Factory and Smart Supply Network took place. These widely supported projects focus on innovation and cooperation, with the aim of strengthening the Dutch manufacturing industry and contributing to major societal challenges, such as labor shortages and the need to make the sector more sustainable. Each project involves more than 20 partners from industry, research institutes and knowledge centers. Brainport Industries fulfills the role of program manager within the projects.
NXTGEN Hightech is a joining of forces of more than 330 parties working together on new high-tech machines and production technologies. The program is supported by the Dutch government’s National Growth Fund. Monika Hoekstra, managing director of NXTGEN Hightech: “The special thing about NXTGEN Hightech is the coherence of the complete program. It’s about concrete applications in specific domains. But right across this, smart industry plays an important role, with the aim of producing products even more efficiently. Then we are talking about digitalization and automation of factories and supply chains, for which the Autonomous Factory and Smart Supply Network projects, among others, are at the forefront.”
High Tech Manufacturing Industry
The Autonomous Factory and Smart Supply Network projects specifically target the high-tech manufacturing industry, in which the southeast Brabant region is strong.
Autonomous Factory
The Autonomous Factory project focuses on development and implementation of process optimization in a high-tech production environment; high complexity, in low volumes. To achieve this, the entire process must become Smart: Smart Manufacturing, Smart Working and Smart System Engineering. Among other things, robotization, new production and assembly technology, flexible and digitized processes and flexible logistics are indispensable elements here. Operating support systems, education and training also play an important role.
Smart Supply Network
Within the Smart Supply Network project, we will work on deepening and scaling up the Smart Connected Supplier Network, in which manufacturing companies work on the digital exchange of information in the supply chain. This will allow companies to share data more easily, quickly and reliably.
Both projects have a duration of seven years. During this period, concrete use cases will be developed step by step through various work packages to ultimately accelerate innovation.
Strengthening the manufacturing industry in a sustainable way
John Blankendaal, Managing Director of Brainport Industries: “The aim of Brainport Industries is to connect the suppliers in the High Tech ecosystem Brainport Industries, to further increase the professionalism of the chain together and to increase competitiveness. These two projects match this perfectly. As program manager, Brainport Industries is not only concerned with the rollout, but we are also ensuring that the results will soon be widely shared within the industry. This way, other parties can also make use of them.” Brigit van Dijk – van de Reijt, director of the Brabant Development Company and also a member of the board of NXTGEN Hightech adds, “It’s fantastic that these two projects are now really taking off and can contribute to a sustainably competitive high-tech sector.”
Eddie Mennen, director of Yaskawa, one of the companies involved in the projects, said, “The projects are both extremely important to distinguish ourselves as a high-tech manufacturing industry. We are therefore pleased to be able to contribute to this. With today’s successful kick-off, the preparation phase has come to an end. In the coming period we will be working on the content of the projects.”
Contact
Want to know more? Contact:
Frits Hoeve
Programma Manager
Brainport Industries
f.hoeve@brainportindustries.nl
+31 (0)6 31 94 20 46
www.brainportindustries.nl