Science and industry are working on a new AI solution for product development
The transformation towards a sustainable economic system is a key task for the future of Germany as an industrial centre - both economically and ecologically. Engineering has a key role to play here. This is because key decisions about reparability, reusability and recyclability are made as early as the product development stage. This means that a sustainable circular economy must be considered right from the start. Scientists from the Advanced Systems Engineering group at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute at Paderborn University are therefore working together with other partners from research and industry to develop an intelligent product passport (iPP). The aim is to expand existing concepts of the digital product passport to include semantic, dynamic and AI-supported functions.
In the context of the EU Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR), among other things, the digital product passport will create a concept for the provision of product-related information across the entire life cycle. It is understood as a digital container for product-specific information that represents the digital identity of the product. Especially in combination with data analysis processes and artificial intelligence (AI), the digital product passport creates potential for implementing the circular economy. "The digital product passport creates transparency. The intelligent product passport makes this information systematically usable for engineering," explains Dr Christian Koldewey, senior engineer in the specialist group and project manager of "iPassPro[1]".
The central element of the new research project is the so-called "Circular Intelligence Hub" (CIH), an engineering platform that integrates and links heterogeneous data sources and processes them using AI methods. "This enables structured and unstructured data to be converted into decision-relevant knowledge and made accessible to different stakeholders as required," explains Leonie Happe, Project Manager at iPassPro. The team is also developing a governance architecture that enables secure and legally compliant data exchange in federated data spaces. These are decentrally organised infrastructures that enable secure and sovereign data exchange between multiple parties.
The solutions developed are being trialled in three pilot projects. This enables companies to systematically integrate circularity aspects into product development through the intelligent product passport and achieve improvements in terms of reparability, reusability and recyclability. Action guidelines and best practices are intended to ensure transferability to other companies and sectors.
"iPassPro" was launched in February this year and will run until the beginning of 2029. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy is funding the project with a total of around 4.5 million euros. The research partners are the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronic Design Technology (IEM, consortium leader) and the Wuppertal Institute. Spherity GmbH and ConWeaver GmbH are enabling the consortium as technology providers. Wilhelm B?llhoff GmbH & Co KG, Herbert Kannegiesser GmbH and CP Contech electronic GmbH are involved as industrial application partners.
This text was translated automatically.
[1] Full title: "iPassPro - Intelligent product passport for the engineering of circular products in the manufacturing industry"
