The project

About the project

Manufacturing is a pillar of innovation and growth for Europe, representing 15% total employment and 80% of exports. Manufacturing is equally essential for production of innovative products and systems that affect every one of us – transportation, household appliances, health products, just to name a few.

Well-functioning equipment is a key to industrial productivity. However, a significant share of machinery in the European production lines is approaching the end of their designed lifetime. These ageing machines can suffer unplanned downtime causing significant losses – in financial terms and of the resources in production when they fail. Simple disposal of the outdated machinery is costly and carries a large environmental footprint. New approaches are needed to ensure European manufacturing remains competitive and protects the environment.

Researchers and industry representatives from nine European countries formed RECLAIM with an ambitious goal to provide replicable solutions that could help European manufacturing sector meet these and future demands.

RECLAIM stands for RE-manufaCturing and Refurbishment LArge Industrial equipment.

This EU funded project intends to demonstrate strategies and technologies that enable the re-use of industrial equipment in old, renewed and new factories alike.

Solutions

RECLAIM solutions aim to both extend machinery lifetime while also improving productivity and performance. The project will focus on harnessing digital analytics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and circular economy strategies to improve predictive maintenance and upgrade legacy machines responsibly and effectively.

Improving informed analysis and decision-making is a key objective.

RECLAIM will create a novel Decision Support Framework to assess the health status of machinery and propose methods, tools or services for the appropriate lifetime extension strategy.

Developed solutions will be demonstrated and refined in real industrial environments to evaluate the lifecycle of the industrial equipment (machines, production lines, robotic system, etc.) and to implement recovery strategies.