Within the iQonic project Politecnico di Milano has successfully developed a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) for Prima Electro use-case.

The overall methodology followed in order to develop a CPS for feed-forward control of manufacturing processes included the back-and-forth information exchange at machine level between hardware (data gathering sensors and actuators) and software (models and meta-models of the processes) components of the production system to optimize process parameters.

Figure 1 – Machine and System Level Actuation and Control Implemented by CPSs

Pima Electro S.p.A offered its own production line of high-power diode laser manufacturing and Fiber Laser Module (FLM) assembly, and the objective was to implement strategies to increase the production efficiency and to reduce production costs through recycling and reconfiguration of products to maintain high quality standards of the outgoing product.

The CPS reduced the dependency on operator expertise in diode assembly operation thanks to its fast and reliable decision-making mechanism and enhances the product quality by applying feed-forward control strategy. Therefore, it prevented the propagation of defects until the end of the production line, thus preserving critical raw materials and increases the sustainability,  and brings huge gains in terms of productivity.

Figure 2 – CPS Control Unit