TEXWIN · Textile Work Intelligence by hierarchical closed-loop control for product and process quality in the Textile Industry

The objective of TexWIN is to increase productivity by up to 20% and reduce down-times of machines by one third of workshop factories; due to a reduction of stop times, set-up times and waiting times, increased flexibility and reliability of processes, and due to reduced sampling effort. The breakthrough is to exploit existing knowledge available in various factory internal and factory external sources by (1) combining and evaluating process state information as well as product and material characteristics and (2) deriving best production instructions. Additionally existing production knowledge and experiences from production operators will be preserved and made available by the CBR module. This will be enabled by the hierarchical control structure TexWIN-Concept" consisting of an adaptive and modular system "TexWIN-System" and re-engineered "TexWIN-Processes" improving quality of products and processes of workshop factory operations. The “TexWIN-System" integrates the two following units: (a) the factory controller for the improvement of the process schedule and event-based coordination of factory (inter-)operations and (b) the adaptive CBR-based production unit controller for identification of best process recipes/machine settings concerning product quality and production process set-up and execution efficiency. The modules will be integrated into a common communication framework, which will enable flexible interfacing and ontology-based information transformation. The "TexWIN-Processes" are adapted factory business processes which allow maximising the efficiency and quality effects and seamless integration into existing factories. TexWIN, which will be tested within in 5 textile and plastic mills, will be best suited for industries dealing basically with make-to-order production, small batches, high-quality product variants, workshop production, complex processes and non-homogeneous and/or natural materials."