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Efficiency, effectiveness, and intelligence in the industrial unit. These are the advantages that the UH4SP solution – Unified Hub 4 Smart Plants – brings to the market.
Nowadays, the great challenge of the industrial units is to provide in perfect conditions and at the best price the right product, the exact quantity, the correct destination, the expected moment, and the duly authorized person.
This is where the UH4SP project comes into action, ensuring visibility, security, control and optimization in loading and unloading operations and the movement of products, vehicles and people, process automation and collaboration with the various agents along the value chain.
Developed by the partners CCG – Centro de Computação Gráfica, Cachapuz – Equipamentos para Pesagem, Lda., University of Minho and Eurotux Informática, SA, between 2016 and 2018, this project now shows very positive results.
This innovative solution falls within the framework of Industry 4.0. and consists of a corporate and collaborative logistical management platform, based on cloud computing technologies, Industrial Internet of Things, integrating solutions of computer vision, machine learning, and mixed reality.
UH4SP – benefits for the companies
The UH4SP brings benefits to companies such as:
- the promotion of operational efficiency;
- the optimization of resource management;
- automatic control of people and vehicles;
- interaction and support for real-time driver navigation.
- the strengthening of the relationship with customers, suppliers, and transporters;
- the expansion of the performance of the various entities in the value chain;
- the improvement of customer service.
With this project it was possible to achieve the promotion of the corporate and aggregate vision of operations of industrial units dispersed by several geographies, through remote and local accesses; the construction of collaborative and cross-cutting tools; and the optimization of the operations and the experience of use in the industrial units, with all the reliability of the system.
The contribution of the CCG in this project was divided by the applied research domains CVIG – Computer Vision, Interaction and Graphics and EPMQ – IT Engineering Process Maturity and Quality.
CVIG focused its research on the development of solutions for (1) Automatic identification of driver and vehicle, using computer vision; (2) Driver interface through a mobile device, focusing on interaction and navigation assistance within the factory and (3) Remote assistance through the exploration of new telepresence concepts in augmented reality.
For its part, EPMQ contributed to the (1) Survey of requirements and referential cloud computing, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0; (2) Development of services and business applications for multi-factory production management; (3) Conception of an architecture and service specification (SOA) in the context of Industry 4.0; (4) Definition of a business model using business/IT alignment methodologies.
For Nelson Alves, project manager at CCG, “UH4SP stands out for its ambitious goals, by targeting a disruptive change from the previous paradigm to an industry 4.0 concept, in a short period time. The innovative design, which allowed the dematerialization, automation and optimization of processes, as well as the passage of on-premise solutions to cloud-based solutions, was only possible thanks to a high research effort and the addition of a multidisciplinary team capable in various areas such as cloud computing, SOA, computer vision, artificial intelligence, computer graphics and mobile computing, just to highlight a few.”
Cândido Martins, Executive & Innovation Manager, at Cachapuz, praised that “the development of UH4SP allowed us to concretize the vision of the future of automation and logistics optimization solutions in industrial units, to strengthen Cachapuz as a player of reference at international level and to reposition its technological and functional offer, integrating differentiating, innovative and disruptive components, aligned with the latest industry paradigms 4.0 “. “The proximity and cooperation between the different teams allowed a perfect combination of knowledge and business, a decisive factor for the success of a project with these characteristics and complexity.”
The UH4SP was funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the COMPETE2020 – Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program.
With 25 years of experience, CCG is at the forefront of research and creation of innovative and disruptive solutions that aim to transform the industry, making it more competitive and innovative
