Preparing for the future
R&D is a major activity to prepare the future of our solutions. We develop this activity both internally, within the framework of collaborative projects and by participating in our customers' R&D projects.
This work allows us to enrich our product offer (A²ECF-SEMI, A²ECF-Industry,...) as well as our expertise.
Research areas
We are continuously developing our skills in our areas of expertise and preparing to meet the challenges of the future for our customers:
- Industry 4.0
- OPC UA
- SEMI Standards
- Digital Twins
- Machine learning
- Artificial Intelligence
- MDE: Model Driven Engineering
- Software Framework patterns
- Advanced manufacturing or Closed-loop manufacturing
The challenges we face are :
- Interoperability
- Green manufacturing
- Performance optimization
- Portability of solutions in varying industrial domains (standards, techniques)
- Workflow scheduling
Interoperability and standardization
We participate in numerous working groups for the standardization of exchanges between machines and computer systems in factories:
- OPC UA within OPC Foundation
- I4AAS working group
- Machine Tools (UMATI) working group
- UA for Machinery working group
- Asset management working group (Co-editor)
- Harmonization working group
- OPC UA Core working group
- Within SEMI
- Contribution in the development of SEMI standards
- GEM300 Task Force
- Trainings on the SEMI Standards
Collaborative projects
- OTPaaS from 2021 to 2025
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) to ensure digital continuity between the field and the cloud.
- Work on high volume and high speed data collection for semiconductor fabs as well as on semiconductor equipment extension with data contextualization.
- Work in partnership notably with CEA-LETI end CEA-LIST.
- Productive 4.0 from 2017 to 2020
- Worked on the assessment of OPC UA for semiconductor domain
- ESCEL-JU Project H2020
- Proof of concepts & demos prepared for the project
- Publications in IEEE Conferences
- OEDIPUS in 2017
- Developed an OPC UA gateway for a collaborative robot that could communicate in Modbus. Solution integrated with Siemens MindSphere.
- EIT Digital project
We collaborate with many partners
Scientific publications
We regularly publish articles in international conferences about our work:
- "Towards building OPC-UA companions for semi-conductor domain" published jointly with CEA at the IEEE Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation conference (ETFA) 2019
- "Multi-level modeling to OPC UA for migrating to Industry 4.0 in semiconductor manufacturing" published jointly with CEA at the IEEE Industrial Cyberphysical Systems (ICPS) conference 2020
- "An industrial feedback on the use of OPC UA for the vertical integration of semiconductor front-ends" published at the IEEE Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation conference (ETFA) 2021
