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These solutions are based on empowering the worker. They involve giving the worker motivating feedback of his/her wellbeing and work performance, and adapting the work environment according to personal competences and preferences. The solutions also involve solutions that engage the workers to share knowledge, participate in designing their work and take responsibility of their own learning and competence development.
What has positively surprised me over the first year of Factory2Fit is the feedback to our idea of utilising the virtual factory platform as the platform for participatory design, knowledge sharing and training applications. Our idea has been extremely well accepted – by both the employers and the workers. Our partners have made some initial concepts and demonstrations that illustrate the idea and it seems to be something that really works and that people are looking forward to.
The already started second year of the project is when we will start the actual implementation and integration work. We are beginning to think about how what we are developing could be piloted in real industrial environments. This will require a lot of discussions with the industrial partners and, of course, collaboration with different project partners. I’m looking forward to the third project year when we will be starting the well-designed industrial pilots and evaluating the most promising solutions with factory workers.
Integrating things together is always challenging and that will surely be true also for Factory2Fit, but I think we have a very good project group who can overcome these challenges. In addition to that, we have an excellent External Advisory Board that brings different expertise to complement our own expertise.
We have a lot of work ahead of us. I’m looking to the future of Factory2Fit very positively – together, we can achieve really good results.
For updates on these results please visit our website and connect with us on social media: Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.
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Factory2Fit Spotlight series - Interviews with the people behind the project
We have spoken to some of our partners about their role and their views on the project. Click on the pictures below for the full interviews.
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Project meetings
We have had four successful face-to-face consortium meetings to date. The kick-off meeting was held in Brussels in October 2016. For our second meeting, we met again in wintery Finland at the VTT premises in Espoo in March 2017. In May-June, we gathered in the West of Ireland for the third meeting hosted by UTRC-I in Cork, and the fourth meeting was hosted by TUC in autumnal Chemnitz, Germany in October 2017. For more details, see the news section of our website.
We are looking forward to our next mid-winter project meeting hosted by Prima Power in Kauhava (Finland) in February 2018.
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The first project meeting in Brussels, October 2016
The third project meeting in Cork, May-June 2017
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The second project meeting in Espoo, March 2017
The fourth project meeting in Chemnitz, October 2017
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The Factory2Fit External Advisory Board
Factory2Fit is very fortunate to have an External Advisory Board that is actively participating in the project. This panel of experts has taken part in three meetings with project partners in 2017. Their feedback, questions and advice have been extremely insightful and valuable to Factory2Fit’s work and we are grateful for their ongoing input.
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Conferences and other events
All Factory2Fit partners have actively participated conferences and other events over the first fifteen months of the project. The events at which we have represented the project include:
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EFFRA's 1st Factories of the Future Community Day in Brussels
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The Berlin Summer School for Human Factors
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The European Researchers' Night in Tampere
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The Manufacturing Summit in Cernobbio
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The International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE) in Los Angeles, CA
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The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) Europe Chapter Annual Conference
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The 10th Conference of the section Work-, Organizational- and Business psychology of the German Psychological Society
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The Advances in Production Management Systems (APMS) conference in Hamburg
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This year, we have also had a presence at events such as the Hannover Trade Fair, the Italian Automation Fair in Parma (clustering with other Factories of the Future projects), EMO Hannover, Advanced Engineering UK in Birmingham, Työelämän tutkimuspäivät 2017 in Tampere, Tag des Betriebs- und Systemingenieurs TBI2017 (Day of operation and system engineers) in Chemnitz.
For more details and interesting reports from future events, have a look at the regularly updated news section of our website.
Publications and project reports
We are pleased to announce that our publications and our project reports – deliverables – can be accessed through our website.
Factory2Fit partners’ conference abstracts, journal papers, posters and presentations are made available through the Publications page on our website. Have a look at our interesting first entries and visit the page regularly for future updates.
In the first year, we completed 13 deliverables – 6 public ones that you can download as full text, and 7 confidential ones with informative summaries available online. Stay tuned for more reports on our findings and results as the project progresses.
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Collaboration with other H2020 Factories of the Future projects
We have joined forces with the other Factories of the Future H2020 projects funded under the same topic: Continuous adaptation of work environments with changing levels of automation in evolving production systems.
We have identified complementarities between the projects and are keen to share ideas and find synergies and scope for cooperation, especially in dissemination. To date, we have arranged joint teleconferences and participated in a few clustering activities. We are looking forward to more collaboration in 2018 and are planning joint press releases, newsletters and events.
Find out more about the other projects by clicking on their logos.
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5th Annual National Manufacturing & Supply Chain Conference & Expo
31st January 2018, Dublin, Ireland
http://www.manufacturingevent.com/
Factory2Fit Consortium meeting
7-8 February 2018, Kauhava, Finland
Factory2Fit Mid-term review meeting
6 June 2018, Brussels
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