About us
Machineries & Factories (M&F) is a research platform with 200 experts creating industrial impact.
Mission
Our mission is to create impact of Ghent University research results beyond the academic world. We
- Are your excellent research, development and innovation partner
- Inspire industry by identifying, communicating and bringing to the market tangible research results, ,
- Create and make available relevant test infrastructure
- Realise spin-offs if the existing eco-system is not (yet) able to absorb our research results
How we work with industry
There are several ways we can work with you, examples are:
- Bilateral research projects wherein our expertise strengthens your innovation projects and speeds up time to market
- Subsidized research projects (e.g. VLAIO research project or VLAIO development project)
- Longer term strategic company projects leading to an in-house PhD e.g. VLAIO Baekeland
- Service agreements based on our test infrastructure and tools
- Service agreements to tackle a burning challenge, in Flanders we are a 'registered technology provider' in the KMO portefeuille
- Subsidized multi-partner research projects working along the value chain or on the same technology from different applications in Flanders (e.g. FLanders Make ICON projects) or in Europe (e.g. H2020 Factory-of-the-Future (FoF))
Strategic alignment
We align our activities with the Flemish strategic research centre for the manufacturing industry Flanders Make. Many of our researchers have a double affiliation FlandersMake@UGent.
Some of our researchers have a double affiliation UGent-imec.
Next to this, we are a member of ai.ugent.be and contribute to the Flanders AI Research program.
Vision
We are working in the field of Machineries & Factories framed within the fourth/fifth industrial revolution (industry 4.0/5.0).:
- Smart motion products (industrial machines, robotics, energy applications and vehicles) and
- Smart production systems (assembly & batch processes).
The fourth industrial revolution is driven by connectivity: motion products and production systems will remain in data connection.
- This brings along exiting new concepts including cyber-physical systems, vertical & horizontal integration, end-to-end engineering and human-worker 4.0 concepts. We make machines and factories smarter through flexible, reliable and performing hardware and software (control). As such it will allow new business models to emerge such as lot-size one production at the cost of series production and XaaS (X as a service).
- We can see an increasing dependency between products and productions systems.
- Machines resp. Factories need to be DESIGNED in view of capabilities of factories (e.g. assembly) resp. industrial machines.
- During factory OPERATION the industrial machines (e.g. robots, drilling &, 3D printing machines) realise key steps in the manufacturing of (motion) products. The performance (e.g. in terms of quality and energy efficiency) of the factories and machines are mutually impacted by their performance.
- Finally, some machines could be considered as factories on wheels (e.g. off road agricultural vehicles), and flexible assembly systems increasingly rely on mobile transportation systems (AGV).
Digital twins and artificial intelligence (AI) are key enabling technologies.
- Our vision is that the strength of digital twins and AI is only fully enabled by the incorporation of domain specific and expert knowledge.
- This domain specific and expert knowledge can present itself in the form of multi-physical, scalable models; traditional control loops or optimisation routines; and knowledge graphs drafted by humans.
We believe the human factor will remain key and might even increase.
The human designer or quality manager needs to be provided with actionable and interpretable decision support systems. The (assembly) operator needs to receive information with state-of-the-art (immersive) technology to flexibly adapt the operation in order to improve the performance of the product or production system whether it is in view of energy efficiency, quality or life time. In all this, the environmental impact should be considered.
Information for our researchers
M&F can assist you in
- Understanding the value of your research
- Turning your project results into real life
- Building an industrial network
- Collaborating with companies
- Setting up and managing multi-partner projects
- Communicating your ideas