Projects

Based on the number of people it employs, the furniture industry is the largest manufacturing sector in the world, and in Europe in particular. To keep its competitiveness, Europe needs to accomplish rapidly the new requirements for the furniture industrial sector in the e-global marketplace. SMART-fm project establishes a Thematic Network organised in 5 inter-coordinated Working Groups to harmonize and demonstrate to the furniture industry the state of the art and trends in Standardisation and Research in complete integrated Product Life Cycle (PLC), intelligence e-business and extended enterprise practices. Network members and furniture related companies are the major receivers of SMART - fm results. They will be the basis to stimulate companies to adopt the project results and the research community to move beyond.

Objectives:

The general objective is to stimulate and accelerate furniture-related companies in the advent of e-business, extended enterprises and intelligent services, to adopt technologies and practices preparing industry and researchers to advance on the state of the art, identifying requirements to move beyond and reach the future vision of furniture manufacturing business. Specific objectives: Propose a new modular and extended ISO Application Protocol, to support the complete integrated Product Life Cycle for the furniture industry manufacturers. Develop e-business services taxonomies, following a previously adopted technical methodology. Co-ordinate the international developments towards the IT-support for extend sector terminology. Harmonise and demonstrate to the furniture industry the state of the art and future vision in Standardisation and Research of complete integrated Product Life Cycle, e-business and extended enterprises. Study and report on the expected Social and IPR implications.

Work description:

The European module of SMART-fm is organised to be self-standing, and independent form the other regions. The Network is co-ordinated by UNINOVA (Technical co-ord) and AIDIMA (Administrative co-ord), and organised in 5 inter-co-ordinated WGs, focused in the key research areas of the project. Each WG has a co-ordinator, responsible for all activities of its WG and to report and input to the referent project Working Packages. The Technical and the Administrative Co-ordination manage the network, assisted by the Secretariat and the Advisory and Assessment Committees. Acting as a cluster of manufacturers, suppliers, industrial associations, universities and research institutes, SMART-fm will establish strategic liaisons with complementary European and International research and development projects an initiatives. To facilitate communicating with the network members, these are organised in language chapters, though that not all members could be English Speakers. To co-ordinate each chapter a National Contact Point per project participant country have been elected, with the duties to establish the link using its native language with its national members. SMART-fm intends to be a paperless network, based on Internet. The projects will set-up a portal to be used as the main entry point to the network, offering multi-level password-protected access to the project’s database. Project dissemination activities are centred on the transfer of results to the industrial, research and standardisation communities. SMART-fm produces regular newsletters, organises conferences, workshops and presentations in industrial fairs including pilot demonstrations. The most relevant scientific results will be submitted for publishing in international scientific journals and a book edited by the end of the project. Regular project reviews will be established at least once a year, meeting Network’s Tech and Admin. Coordin, WGs leaders and representatives of the Advisory and Assessment Committee.

Milestones:

Different workshops presenting, discussing and assessing the state of the art of the different Workpackages and identifying gaps and proposing pilot demonstrations, as well as on the Reference models and suite of modules, on platforms and integration of intelligente e-biz; on requirements and motivations of furniture industry; on standard based platform and reference knowledge presentation; on harmonised taxonomies for furniture classification. It is pretended to have more than 500 members.

Coordinator

Department: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES DEPARTMENT AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT

Organisation: ASOCIACION DE INVESTIGACION Y DESARROLLO EN LA INDUSTRIA DEL MUEBLE Y AFINES

CALLE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 13

46980 PATERNA - VALENCIA

SPAIN

Contact Person:

Name: NU?EZ ARI?O, Maria Jose

Tel: +34-96-1366070

Fax: +34-96-1366185

Email: mjnunez@aidima.es

Sources: European Commission