SMART-GRIP offers a SW suite that includes the Maintenance Schedule Optimization (MSO) tool, which allows the best selection of strategy and maintenance policies, the calculation of the optimal maintenance program, the minimization of the LCC (Life Cycle Cost) and the maximization of operational availability, through the implementation of a decision-making process based on historical data and the Matchmaking tool, an intuitive and easy-to-use means of selecting robotic equipment.
People who deal with maintenance issues should always consider the “side effects” of their choices and the resulting unexpected downtime, due for example to the recovery of a part, the review of production planning, missed deadlines and so on.
The SMART-GRIP SW suite allows you to plan maintenance activities well in advance, improving the efficiency of companies and lowering maintenance costs. In addition, it is possible to customize the SW suite for specific industrial contexts through gui customization, set other user-dependent features such as models and/or cost equations, as well as the implementation of dedicated adaptation plug-ins, in order to address cross-sectoral maintenance issues (e.g. in the Machine Tools (MT)/Robotics, Automotive, Energy and other industrial sectors).
Maintenance teams are also becoming increasingly autonomous in factories and Robotics is increasingly available to the end user, with the result that the former always need direct contact with the suppliers of the latter.
The objectives of the SMART-GRIP project are therefore twofold.
On the one hand, to support potential customers in choosing robotic grippers adapted to their needs; on the other hand, to provide a complementary tool to support the decision-making level of maintenance management, providing an integrated SW suite for an efficient selection, in terms of cost and environment, of maintenance work strategies and policies throughout the life cycle.
The manufacturing sector sees a paradigm shift from execution-to-fault maintenance (repair after breakage), through scheduled maintenance (repair before it breaks), to conditional maintenance (assess machine deterioration, calculate the remaining useful life of the machine, and perform maintenance when necessary).
SMART-GRIP therefore aims to actively support this positive change (less waste and energy consumption) with its new optimization approach that, by exploiting the available maintenance data, can determine a maintenance plan with lower costs and environmental impact.