Knowledge Based Services for Traditional Manufacturing Sectors Provided by a Network of High Tech SMES

Abstract Manufacturing enterprises, particularly SMEs (Small/Medium Enterprises), are quickly evolving according to market and products fast changes. Manufacturing machines, as a matter of fact, are a core enabling technology in a number of key industrial sectors (metal, wood, leather, stone, plastic, …), which have common requirements for increased product customization and improved competitiveness in terms of reduced cost, shorter delivery times and improved quality. In order to pursue these increasing needs of flexibility, manufacturing machines grow more and more complex and the tasks performed by these machines become complex too.The greater integration between the machine performances and the related process parameters becomes also a crucial requirement that the user of the machine has difficulties to grasp and control Task planning and all the other operations related to the manufacturing machine (such as maintenance, configuration, training and so on), as a result, grow complex too and new competencies and larger knowledge of the process parameters, machine performances and their interaction are needed. The approach here described, named KoBaS (after Knowledge Based Services), aims to provide a breakthrough in the current practices in the use of manufacturing machines, by promoting the development of a set of tools of new conception meant to provide, on one hand, an advanced task and process planning and, on the other hand, machine configuration, maintenance, training and management support. These novel tools, for task and process planning, will be provided as services (customized for every manufacturing machine) for less intensive R&D traditional industrial sectors, by a Network of High-Tech SMEs, whose constitution is fostered by the actualisation of the approach. This paper is meant to present the KoBaS approach, its relevance and its foreseen economic impactfor the manufacturing sector.