Industry 4.0 is the next developmental stage in the organisation of the manufacturing value chain. ICT-based systems will play a major role, mainly by creating a virtual copy of the physical world and facilitating decentralised structures through Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Over the IoT, CPS cooperate with each other and humans in real-time. Via the Internet-of-Services, internal and cross-organisational services are utilised by participants of the value chain. DISRUPT aims to spearhead the transition to the next-generation manufacturing by facilitating the vision of a "Smart Factory". The new era of manufacturing asks for flexible factories that can be quickly reprogrammed to provide faster time-to-market responding to global consumer demand, address mass-customisation needs and bring life to innovative products. The traditional automation pyramid seems unable to accommodate this transformation. Our concept is to DISRUPT that pyramid by utilising the capabilities offered by modern ICT to facilitate (i) in-depth (self-)monitoring of machines and processes, (ii) decision support and decentralised (self-)adjustment of production, (iii) effective collaboration of the different IoT-connected machines with tools, services and actors (iv) seamless communication of information and decisions from and to the plant floor and (v) efficient interaction with value chain partners. Within DISRUPT, each element of production is controlled via the IoT by its virtual counterpart. The data collected is analysed to detect complex events that trigger automated actions. DISRUPT offers a set of decision support tools based on three core modules (modelling, simulation and optimisation) and a secure and flexible "plug-n-play" platform that will allow engineers from different disciplines to collaborate in developing services. It will be cloud-based to accommodate the anticipated high data volume and computational needs, while offering accessibility via any device anywhere in the world.

The U-TURN project aims at addressing freight urban distribution, focusing on food logistics. The project will contribute to our understanding of freight distribution in urban areas, especially addressing the special requirements and needs of food transportation, and will suggest innovative collaboration practices and tools towards achieving more efficient operations from both an environmental and cost perspective. The project will analyse existing freight urban flows, identify synergies and winning logistics sharing and collaboration strategies and will assess them in three ways: through comparative analysis based on actual market data, through simulation experimentation and via pilot execution in four different countries: Germany, UK, Italy and Greece. U-TURN will further contribute to the adoption of these strategies through managerial assessment, quantifiable benefits and the provision of tools, including a "smart" transport matching tool, a collaboration platform, a simulation tool and economic assessment model. The project aims to exploit the opportunities that currently exist for consolidation of transportation flows from food manufacturers to the various point-of-sales located in urban areas, as well as from local food producers and online retailers directly to consumers, and the high industrial interest behind this topic.

OPTIMISED aims to develop novel methods and tools for deployment of highly optimised and reactive planning systems that incorporate extensive factory modelling and simulation based on empirical data captured using smart embedded sensors and pro-active human-machine interfaces. The impact of energy management on factory planning and optimisation will be specifically assessed and demonstrated to reduce energy waste and address peak demand so that operations that require or use less energy, can allow this excess energy to be re-routed to local communities. The OPTIMISED environment will use semantically enriched process modelling, big-data generation, capture and perform analytics to effectively support planning specialists, manufacturing engineers, team leaders and shopfloor operatives throughout the systems lifecycle. These next generation manufacturing systems supported by data rich manufacturing execution systems with OPTIMISED technology will support a dramatic improvement in system performance, improved operational efficiency and equipment utilisation, real-time equipment and station performance monitoring, adaptation and resource optimisation. The OPTIMISED vision will be achieved by developing systems which are able to: 1. Monitor system performance through an integrated sensor network, automatically detecting bottlenecks, faults and performance drop-off 2. Continuously evolve to respond to disruptive events, supply chain disruptions and non-quality issues through factory simulation modelling 3. Improve understanding and monitoring of energy demand curve and energy usage per industrial process and globally improve efficiency of production line through reduced energy waste 4. Understand potential benefits, added value and impacts of participating in Demand Side Response (DSR) processes and becoming an active player in the changing energy industry, instead of remaining a conventional passive element that simply acquires a service from energy providers