IMS2020 - Supporting Global Research for 2020 Manufacturing Vision

IMS2020 (www.ims2020.net) aims at developing a roadmap on Global Sustainable Manufacturing, Products and Services for 2020.

The project, working in the framework of IMS, is conducted by an international consortium of companies, universities and research centres from Europe, Japan, Korea and US.

The IMS2020 team has identified relevant Research Topics to shape the future of manufacturing through international cooperation.

These Research Topics (RT) will be recommended to the European Commission and to the IMS to be the focus for future international cooperation research projects. Thus, the Research Topic descriptions have a strong industrial focus and should have clear expected results.

This wiki aims at sharing and discussing the proposed Research Topics with you, to improve them together in order to provide better input.

The Research Topics are divided into five “Key Area Themes” (KATs) where the project focuses. These are:

1. Sustainable Manufacturing, Products and Services (click here to find the research topics)
In sustainable manufacturing the entire lifecycle of the product or process will be taken into account, paying close attention to the technology adoption to support the use and assessment of resources and materials from their design phase, through production until their end of life.

2. Energy Efficient Manufacturing (click here to find the research topics)
Energy efficient manufacturing aims to reduce the use of scarce resources and the carbon footprint by considering innovative methods and technologies, as products and processes are no longer just subject to cost and quality.

3. Key Technologies (click here to find the research topics)
Key technologies are those that yield a high impact on the next generation of manufacturing, such as model-based enterprises, nano-technology, smart materials, robotics, etc.

4. Standardisation
Standardisation is critical to the successful uptake of efficient interoperable solutions in the modern globalised enterprises. Kat 4 topics have focus on different issues, from supply chain management to semantic processes, that have in common the need for standardization.

5. Innovation, Competences Development and Education (click here to find the research topics)
Innovation, competence development and education contains research topics to support the development of learning organizations through building learning communities, establishing teaching factories, creating innovation agents, etc. Competence is a key factor in the knowledge economy and a prerequisite for a future competitive manufacturing industry.

We are looking forward your comments, suggestions and criticisms, to develop better and more interesting research topics for our future researches, so please register and influence the future of manufacturing with your opinions and ideas!

With the registration, you will also become part of the Roadmapping Support Group (RSG), you'll have access to all project's results (final version of the roadmap) and you'll be invited to the Workshops,  Brokerage Events and IMS Forum 2010 the project is going to organize.

For more hints on how to use the wiki and participate, please check the getting started page; to solve spamming problems, anonymous registration is no further allowed; if you are interested to comment and partecipate to the IMS2020 Wiki, please mail the IMS2020 project manager at: jacopo.cassina@polimi.it .

If, while reading the topics, you'll have an idea about a new one, you can always propose it to us; read how in the "create a new research topic" page.