Humans are at the center of knowledge-intensive manufacturing processes. They must be skilled and flexible to meet the requirements of their work environment. The training of new workers in these processes is time consuming and costly for companies. Industries, such as the Italian textile sector suffer from the shortage of skilled workers caused, e.g. by the demographic change. A second challenge for the manufacturing sector is the continuous competition through high quality products. COALA will address both challenges through the innovative design and development of a voice-first Digital Intelligent Assistant for the manufacturing sector. The COALA solution will base on the privacy-focused open assistant Mycroft. It integrates prescriptive quality analytics, AI system to support on-the-job training of new workers, and a novel explanation engine - the WHY engine.
COALA will address AI ethics during design, deployment, and use of the new solution. Critical components for the adoption of the solution are a new didactic concept to reach workers about opportunities, challenges, and risks in human-AI collaboration, and a concurrent change management process. Three use cases (textile, white goods, liquid packaging) will evaluate the results in common manufacturing processes with significant economic relevance. COALA will contribute its results to the European AI community, e.g. via the AI4EU platform, and it will involve Digital Innovation Hubs to replicate its demonstrators for Europes first trustworthy digital assistant for the manufacturing industry. We expect to reduce the failure cost in manufacturing by 30-60% with the prescriptive quality analytics feature and the assisted worker training. For the change over time we expect a reduction of 15% to 30% by shortening the worker training time.
| Web resources: |
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/957296
https://twitter.com/Coala4Factory https://www.linkedin.com/in/coala-your-factory-assistant/detail/recent-activity/ |
| Start date: | 01-10-2020 |
| End date: | 30-09-2023 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 5 706 726,00 Euro - 5 706 726,00 Euro |
| Twitter: | @Coala4Factory |
EFFRA Innovation Portal
Original description
Humans are at the center of knowledge-intensive manufacturing processes. They must be skilled and flexible to meet the requirements of their work environment. The training of new workers in these processes is time consuming and costly for companies. Industries, such as the Italian textile sector suffer from the shortage of skilled workers caused, e.g. by the demographic change. A second challenge for the manufacturing sector is the continuous competition through high quality products. COALA will address both challenges through the innovative design and development of a voice-first Digital Intelligent Assistant for the manufacturing sector. The COALA solution will base on the privacy-focused open assistant Mycroft. It integrates prescriptive quality analytics, AI system to support on-the-job training of new workers, and a novel explanation engine - the WHY engine. COALA will address AI ethics during design, deployment, and use of the new solution. Critical components for the adoption of the solution are a new didactic concept to reach workers about opportunities, challenges, and risks in human-AI collaboration, and a concurrent change management process. Three use cases (textile, white goods, liquid packaging) will evaluate the results in common manufacturing processes with significant economic relevance. COALA will contribute its results to the European AI community, e.g. via the AI4EU platform, and it will involve Digital Innovation Hubs to replicate its demonstrators for Europes first trustworthy digital assistant for the manufacturing industry. We expect to reduce the failure cost in manufacturing by 30-60% with the prescriptive quality analytics feature and the assisted worker training. For the change over time we expect a reduction of 15% to 30% by shortening the worker training time.Status
CLOSEDCall topic
ICT-38-2020Update Date
27-10-2022
27/06/22 - 08:05
COALA Newsletter #3 - Intelligent Cognitive Assistance for Liquid Production Line
Welcome to the 3rd edition of the COALA Newsletter. A key milestone has been reached with the release of the second prototype of the COALA main components. These trustworthy AI components with a voice-enabled Digital Intelligent Assistant as an interface have been integrated and will be evaluated within the coming months in the three business cases. This achievement was recently presented at the project‘s mid-term review, which took place successfully in the beginning of May 2022.
This newsletter edition will highlight the implementation of one of COALA's AI components, Cognitive Advisor Service, within the DIVERSEY business case in order to support line operators and managers towards optimum configuration of the production line.
COALA partners have been active also in dissemination and community management activities. COALA has organised its first webinar on 20th of May 2022, where we introduced some benefits of application of Digital Intelligent Assistants in the quality testing of white good use case and showed a demo on the current prototype of the Augmented Manufacturing Analytics feature. A recording of the webinar is available here.
In the community and event sections of this newsletter, you will find some of the past and upcoming event highlights. We hope that you will find our newsletter interesting and useful. If you have suggestions for future topics this newsletter should cover, do not hesitate to contact us.
Enjoy reading our newsletter!
17/12/21 - 14:44
COALA Newsletter #2 - Solution and AI-assisted on-the-job training for textile workers
Dear Reader,
After 15 months, COALA is close to reaching its third milestone. It will have a second prototype and its components will be ready for integration into the three industrial business cases. This issue will present COALA's solution and its underlying components, as well as the introduction of the textile business case. This case focusses on training and development of textile worker's AI competencies.
COALA partners have been active also in dissemination and community management activities. The next event co-organised by COALA is the 4th International Workshop on Key Enabling Technologies for Digital Factories (Ket4DF) in conjunction with CAiSE 2022, which will be held on 6 – 10 June 2022 in Leuven, Belgium. More detailed information on the paper submission date is available on the Ket4DF 2022 website. In the community and event sections of this newsletter, you will find some of the past and upcoming event highlights.
We hope that you will find our newsletter interesting and useful. If you have suggestions for future topics this newsletter should cover, do not hesitate to contact us.
Enjoy reading our newsletter!
05/10/21 - 08:03
COALA Newsletter #1 - Vision and Human-AI Collaboration in Quality Control of White Goods
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COALA will contribute in the ongoing discussion about AI ethics and potential standards, monitor the standardization potential for worker education under consideration of AI competencies, and will use and contribute to IT standards. We will take into account available IT-related standards and use them when applicable. This includes normative standards as set by ISO and its national bodies, which are of high importance to industrial companies. We will assess standards proposed by major influential de-facto standardization bodies like W3C, OASIS, and OMG. Standardization topics concern: