FPC has taken the initiative through the Regiodeal, the outcome of a deal Regio Twente and Twente Board have made with the government. The government invested up to thirty million euros in regional initiatives last fall. One of these investments is the Advanced Manufacturing Program. The Twente Regiodeal was signed in June. The Advanced Manufacturing Program is part of the Technology as Engine chapter. The aim is to develop East Netherlands into an ‘advanced manufacturing hub’ creating a pull factor to atract partners across Europe for manufacturers. Biba Visnjicki: ‘In doing so, we work with projects and focus on strengthening both education and the technical and cooperation infrastructure. We are pleased that the Regiodeal embraces the concept of advanced manufacturing and, with a view to speed things up. We have limited cash for this, so we are mainly investing in-kind. Once the RegioDeal funding is in place, we can scale up and carry out the projects in full.’
One example is the development of Perron038 in Zwolle as an innovation centre for the regional manufacturing industry . The initiators include AWL from Harderwijk, ITMGroup from Kampen and Wadinko from Zwolle. FPC is the technology partner for production management, robotics and augmented and virtual reality, among others. Another project involves building a demonstrator for adaptive production. This is the modern way of producing in smart industry: responding quickly to ever-changing market and customer requirements with the help of digitisation and flexible automation. Smart software plays a leading role, but there will also be a physical set-up at the FPC on the University of Twente campus. ‘In the Virtual Reality Lab, we will show how to link data systems and physical systems to realise advanced products and services on the shop floor. This spring, we want to have a first demonstrator available for customers.’
A key asset of FPC is its student team. Biba Visnjicki says: ‘We let master students, together with companies and researchers, do targeted industrial projects, including in the field of PLM. Students help companies introduce product lifecycle management, the kick-off was at the beginning of this month.’
