CARES C4T was recently delighted to host to a seminar on the topic of “The J-Park-Simulator: roadmap to smart factories”. The seminar was a first public presentation of one of the centrepieces of the CARES C4T programme, the J Park Simulator (JPS). JPS is a next-generation modelling tool which can provide public sector agencies and infrastructure providers with the ability to assess the full, multi-dimensional impact of different ’what-if’ scenarios in real time. From the chemical processes to the electricity grids and from building information management to safety controls, JPS is able to give clear, visual information to support decision-making and option analysis.
The main presentation and product demonstration was given by Martin J Kleinelanghorst, Senior Research Fellow in CARES C4Tand project coordinator of the J-Park Simulator under IRP 3. Prof. Markus Kraft (CARES Director and Principal Investigator, IRP3) gave a brief introduction which drew on material presented to the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier in the year.
The seminar attracted the interest of people from research, government agencies and industry, with some 70 people attending the event. The presentation was followed by some drinks and light snacks that provided the framework for some lively discussions and inspiring exchanges of ideas between the guests.
“In this seminar we purposely placed our emphasis on practical application and live demonstrations. Our idea was to balance abstract theories and concepts with concrete examples how these concepts could look like in everyday life. The positive feedback we received tells us that it worked well,” said Martin Kleinelanghorst.
The central idea presented at this seminar is to link the three concepts of Industry 4.0, the Eco-Industrial Park, and a cross-domain ontology to form the J-Park Simulator as a next-generation platform. Industry 4.0 characterises smart factories in which a cyber-physical system creates virtual copies of the physical world, monitors physical processes, makes decentralised decisions and allows machine-to-machine communication without human interaction or intervention. All this happens in real time. An Eco-Industrial Park is characterised by synergies between companies through cooperation. The cross-domain ontology as the third concept enables storing, sharing and exchanging of information in machine-readable format.
Development work on the J-Park Simulator continues at a fast pace and CARES C4T is looking forward to presenting further advances in this technology in the near future.
