SuFSeF - Final report of the first year

This project proposes a Sustainable Factory Semantic Framework (SuFSeF) to effectively and efficiently support both the design and management of the factory, in particular by an energy and Environmental point of view. The SuFSeF should promote major time and cost savings, while enhancing the design, management, evaluation and reconfiguration of new or existing factories with particular attention to the energy and environmental sustainability, supporting the capability to simulate dynamic complex behaviour over the whole lifecycle of the factory. Moreover, the framework will enable the implementation of a simulation-monitoring loop, so that the energy consumption and maintenance interventions and their costs will be more programmable and less uncertain, giving the possibility to reduce operating costs. The reduction of the costs may allow the industrial companies increasing the available budget for other goals, i.e. for research and development (R&D): this opportunity may be very important in this period, where the financial crisis causes a significant reduction of the budget assessed for R&D by the industrial sector