Smart factory

Digitalization, Industry 4.0, smart factories, etc. for Slovenian industrial and export oriented companies, are a description of the ongoing evolution that they themselves experience and can be summarized in the form of strategic orientations in the following three points:

• Uniformly designed umbrella processes with precisely defined contact points and control points that will enable digitization of the most important processes of the company and their connection with the support processes and processes of business partners.
• Use of the most modern and optimal technologies both in the analysis and layout of processes and the concept of a smart factory as in the implementation of processes.
• Significantly increase the added value of these processes.

The concept of managing a smart factory should be based on the simultaneous development of all the components needed to build a smart factory:

• “smart products” … that can communicate with equipment, people and provide information for guidance,
• “smart equipment” … that can communicate with products, people and provides information for guidance
• “smart people” … who are trained to manage smart equipment and products, and use information to manage processes,
• “smart” concepts that enable the rational operation and use of technologies with clearly defined inputs / outputs and characteristics, so that digitization is possible,
• “smart management” based on the minimum number of data for maximum effect (added value).

The primary aim of the vertical value chain smart factory is to address the challenge of the Smart Factory in the framework of SRIP ToP with the active involvement of all stakeholders in Slovenia and build a functioning support environment that will enable companies to integrate at different stages of their digital and technological maturity.

The key building blocks of this support environment, which will be provided by the vertical value chain Smart Factory are:

• linking and upgrading the support to already established value chains for the provision of four (4) step-by-step “smart turnkey” services,
• establishing a single network of knowledge and information on factories of the future,
• the establishment of a three-level demo infrastructure (Smart Factory model), according to the Open innovation model,
• the establishment of an internal market for real industrial scenarios of collected data for verifying the power and real useful value of artificial intelligence methods.

And by doing so, we are directly addressing the challenges that most Slovene companies are facing today, introducing technologies of Industry 4.0 in their business.

Vertical value chain “Smart factory” includes all vertical value chains and horizontal networks within SRIP ToP and represents the SRIP ToP roof.

These new cross-cutting areas and the ICT horizontal network  from SRIP Smart Towns and Communities, as well as other SRIPs, strongly influence the added value of the whole industry.