Sacmi a partner in the European Z-Bre4K predictive diagnostics project

Maintenance in general - and predictive diagnostics in particular - lie at the very core of the new challenges facing European manufacturing. In keeping with the opportunities opened up by 4.0 enabling technology, the Z-Bre4K project (in which Sacmi is part of a 17-partner European team made up of leading players from industry, academia and research) hinges on a revolutionary approach to this field.

Financed by the European Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme - which is investing 77 billion euro in the challenges that will be faced by industry, science and society between 2014 and 2020 - the Z-Bre4K project aims to design new predictive algorithms for a manufacturing world that is evolving away from the logic of mass production towards “assembly-to-order” industrial models (i.e. manufacturing systems that need modular, scalable machines and components (and, therefore, strategies).

Project goals include a 24% increase in European industrial efficiency, fewer workplace incidents and higher quality (alongside the creation of 400 new jobs and a return on investment of 42 million euro for the new consortium). Sacmi will contribute by creating a predictive maintenance diagnostics system to be installed on its CCM continuous compression moulding presses, which feature a technology that is already leading the way on the plastic cap manufacturing market.

The Z-bre4K team will place the Sacmi "demonstrator" alongside other demonstrators developed by European leaders in their respective fields (such as Gestamp and Philips) to create what could, potentially, be the new benchmark platform for diagnostics and predictive maintenance systems.