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Centre of Excellence for Advanced Control Technologies Centre of Excellence for Advanced Control Technologies Ljubljana, February 2008 Centre of Excellence for Advanced Control Technologies (CoE ACT) Head of CoE ACT: Prof. Dr. Stanko Strmčnik Principal Institution: “Jožef Stefan“ Institute e-mail: [email protected] http://dsc.ijs.si/ CoE ACT web page: http://www.tvp.si/ Centre of Excellence for Advanced Control Technologies Principal research organisation Control technology “Jožef Stefan” Institute Control technology is associated with informatics, cyber- netics and process automation. It is one of the key tech- Edited by nologies that can contribute to the increased efficiency of Dr. Nadja Hvala, Dr. Vladimir Jovan production processes. By promoting the implementation Printing of advanced control solutions and tools, Slovenia has the Razvedrilo d.o.o., Ljubljana possibility to improve the competitiveness of production and service enterprises. Edition: 500 copies Co-financing The activity of Single Programming Document Slovenia 2004-2006 partially financed by EU within European Region Development Fund. Strategy for developing control techno- financed with European Regional Development Fund logy in Slovenia (ERDF). The Strategy has been prepared by a consortium of Joint development strategy in the partners united within the Process Control Technology field of control technology Network (PCTN). The PCTN connects three major Slov- Project 1 Project 2 enian academic institutions and ten engineering firms, Advanced Control Technologies Centre of Excellence for Advanced the latter being the most important Slovenian suppliers of for Increasing Competitiveness Control Technologies Equipment services and equipment in the area of control technology. AK1: Equipment In the process of preparing the Strategy, an additional 44 R&D projects: production companies – all users of control technology AK2: Project management AK3a-1 AK3a-2 AK3a-3 – have taken part. R&D projects: AK3-1 AK3-2 AK3-3 Research and technological develo- AK3a-4 AK3a-5 AK3a-6 pment areas The research and technological development topics foreseen within this strategy encompass the following: Schematic representation of the two projects aiming at the implementati- information technology for production management, the on of the Strategy and co-financed within ERDF control of complex systems and processes, fault detection and quality control, the support of logistic processes in The work within the CoE ACT was set so that it comple- production, technologies supporting the quality of living ments the basic and applied research projects co-fi- and habitation, technologies for reducing pollution in the nanced by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and natural environment, the automation of machines and Technology (or the Slovenian Research Agency) within devices (embedded systems), and, finally, technologies the “Systems and Cybernetics” research area, as well as enabling the development of new tools and building blocks in accordance with current EU 6th Framework projects for control systems. in which the partners of the CoE ACT are involved, i.e., PRISM, CONNECT, PEGASE, BRACCIA, STEROLTALK, Links to other projects and the National ADOPBIO and NextGenCell. Research & Development Programme The proposal for implementing the CoE ACT has been sub- Control technology is also one of the priority areas of the mitted for co-financing as a complementary programme National Research & Development Programme of the to the project proposal “Advanced Control Technologies Republic of Slovenia. for Increasing Competitiveness”. The latter was also co- Partners General objectives Most of the CoE ACT partners are also partners of the The global objective of the Strategy for developing control PCTN. These include academic partners, engineering technology in Slovenia is the following: enterprises in the areas of automation and the IT support of industrial processes, and industrial enterprises – the With the proposed development and implemen- end users of control technology. The initial consortium was tation of control technology we will increase the later extended to include two research groups from the competitive advantage of engineering firms and Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, end users. and their industrial partners. The project’s objectives are achieved through the follow- List of partners: ing strategic aims: Academic institutions: a) the development of new products, services and “Jožef Stefan“ Institute, technologies for suppliers of control technologies, Ljubljana mainly by working on joint technology-development projects; Faculty of Electrical b) the introduction and dissemination of new as well as Engineering, University of Ljubljana existing technologies for users of control technologies, Faculty of Electrical mainly by working on joint demonstration projects; Engineering and Compu- c) the establishing of the innovative development ter Science, University of environment in Slovenia within the area of this Maribor technology. Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of The main factors that determined the successful imple- Ljubljana mentation of the Strategy to date are the following: the interest in knowledge and services within the process Engineering enterprises: control technology, the research excellence of the aca- demic partners, the long tradition of cooperation between INEA d. o. o., some of the main academic and industrial partners of the Ljubljana PCTN, the achievement of some remarkable joint R&D results in the past, and the strong interest of the PCTN Metronik d.o.o., partners in cooperating in joint projects. Ljubljana Synatec d.o.o., Idrija Financial dimension The size of the investment in the area of process control LIKO PRIS d.o.o., technology during the period 2004–2008, in order to Vrhnika implement the proposed strategy, was estimated to be about €26m, with the contribution from the business sec- Robotina d.o.o., tor being about €13m, and the rest coming from Structural Izola Funds and other national and international resources. GOAP d.o.o., These sums do not include the basic and applied research Nova Gorica funding (via the Slovenian Research Agency) and the in- vestments in the establishment and development of the TELEM d.o.o., Maribor innovation/business infrastructure. ŠPICA International Because of the limited financial resources, only about 20% d.o.o., Ljubljana of the foreseen research and development work has been FDS Research d.o.o., performed so far. The main financial contribution, about Ljubljana €5,4m, was devoted to the project “Advanced Control Technologies for Increasing Competitiveness”. The invest- ETI d.d., ments in the formation and initial operation of the CoE Izlake ACT were about €1,35m, of which €0,91m was from the ERDF, and about €0,2m came from private funds. Industrial enterprises – users of R&D results: Co-financing was performed through the activities of the LIV Plastika d.o.o., Centres of Excellence in the frame of Priority No.1 of Sin- Postojna gle Programming Document 2004-2006 “Promotion of ALPINA d.d., the productive sector and competitiveness“, coordinated Žiri by Dr. Darja Piciga, Ministry of Higher Education, Science Lek d.d., Ljubljana and Technology of Republic of Slovenia. Domel d.d., Železniki Wastewater treatment plant Domžale-Kamnik d.o.o., Domžale Results achieved Future development The project objectives achieved – and evaluated with the The future work of the CoE ACT will be based on the relevant indicators – are shown in the table below. existing strategy prepared by the PCTN, which due to limited financial resources was only partially implemented Operational during the previous period. To this end we plan to stick Indicator description Achieved objective to the already defined broader research areas, but at the number of new/improved same time give emphasis to some new directions for the To develop new or 9 improve existing technologies work. Some of the anticipated topics are as follows: the technologies, number of new/improved products 14 rapid prototyping of advanced (nonlinear, multivarible 1 products and and predictive) control methods; distributed and remote services for number of new/improved services 4 control using internet technologies; model-based produc- technology number of new patents or technical tion control; technologies for intelligent buildings; the providers 3 innovations development and industrial application of a methodology To implement new number of implemented for searching for new product opportunities, the develop- 11 and improve existing demonstration projects ment of innovative products for identified opportunities, automation and 2 and the integration of marketing and design functions in information systems a company. for the users of number of (other) R&D results 14 technology It is also planned to invest in new equipment, adapt the formation and initial operation of 1 existing laboratories and to build some new laboratories. the CoE All the activities will be coordinated with existing and future number of researchers working 77 national and EU projects. within the CoE number of organizations Projects within the CoE ACT To establish an cooperating within the project 19 The applied research work and the development of new environment (programme) of the CoE 3 technologies, products and services (or their improve- supporting number of joint R&D projects 12 ment) was conducted within the following six projects innovations number of joint marketing actions 2 (denoted as AK3a-1 to AK3a-6). number
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