Overview

The EU-funded ASSISTANT project aims to develop breakthrough solutions for the manufacturing industry, using artificial intelligence to optimize production systems. One of the keystones of ASSISTANT is the creation of intelligent digital twins. By combining machine learning, optimization, simulation, and domain models, ASSISTANT develops tools and solutions providing all required information to help production managers design production lines, plan production, and improve machine settings for effective and sustainable decisions that guarantee product quality and safety. With 12 Partners involved, ASSISTANT aims to provide a set of AI-based intelligent digital twins that helps process engineers and production planners to operate collaborative mixed-model assembly lines based on the data collected from IoT devices and external data sources. Such a tool will help planners to design the assembly line, plan the production, operate the line, and improve process tuning. In addition, the system monitors the line in real-time, ensures that all required resources are available, and allow fast re-planning when necessary. ASSISTANT aims to make cost-effective decisions while ensuring product quality, safety, the well-being of the workers, and managing the various sources of uncertainties. The resulting intelligent digital twin systems will be data-driven, agile, autonomous, collaborative, explainable, and safe but reactive.