Welcome to the FP7 project TIPSS website!

The main focus of the European research and development project TIPSS is to describe the role of toolmakers changing from producers to producing service-providers being managers of global business networks.

The operational availability of both injection molding machines and injection moulds can be improved significantly on the basis of so-called "smart tools". Smart tools are injection moulds equipped with state-of-the-art sensor technology that delivers real-time data from the production process. The on-line analysis of the data gathered enables an optimized mix of both condition-based and preventive maintenance services, which directly leads to an increase of the overall operational availability of the production cell.

A consortium of ten partners from eight European countries has joined forces to achieve the goals of the TIPSS project.

The TIPSS project is co-financed within the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community.

Project News

3rd General Assembly held at KTW in Waidhofen/Thaya, Austria

published on 21st April 2011

The 3rd General Assembly took place on the 16th of March 2011. It focused on reviewing the progress of the previous period as well as planning the work program for the final months of TIPSS. The conceptual as well as the laboratory validation have been successfully finalised. Demonstration activities are in the process of being executed and consist of four case studies at Centimfe, KTW, SWA and WIRO, the latter three of which have yet to be finished.

Main focus of the shop floor presentation of KTW was the production machine on which the TIPSS testing tool has been mounted. The machine is currently running and the Mould Jini is generating and transmitting the tool’s process data to the collaboration platform. The technical set-up and function of the tools to which the Mould Jini with its 9 sensors is applied have been explained to all participants. The demonstration consists of the six parts Data Stream Management, Rule Management System, Collaboration Platform Business Data Management, Collaboration Platform Monitoring Tools, Historical Data Analysis, and Collaboration Platform Activity Management.

5th Steering Committee in Stod / Czech Republic

published on 24th September 2010

On the 8th of September, the 5th Steering Committee Meeting has been hosted by the project partner SWA in Stod / Cezch Republic. In addition to the previous meetings, a whole day of workshops to prepare the last year of TIPSS has been held on the 7th of September. On the Steering Committee Meetings itself, all workpackage leaders presented an overview of their ongoing and finished research activities and gave a quick outlook of the coming testing tasks.

It has been agreed on to establish three test beds at different partners to evaluate the TIPSS results and to ensure the usability and transferability of the prototypes.

Three identical test beds to establish the proof of concept

published on 15th June 2010

For the demonstration of the TIPSS concept, three test beds have been set up and will be used for the proof of concept in the following month.

The KTW test bed of the KTW plant in Waidhofen allows to test the toolbook prototype with a real production system. The injection moulding machine provides the most general working conditions detected trough a limited set of sensors that have been possible to install on such standard system.

To test particular and critical working conditions that cannot be gained with the real systems (to avoid the damaging of the tools) two identical test beds have been set up at the labs of the University of Rouse and TXT. The test beds use hardware simulators to generate related values for the process variables and thereby provide simulation capacities for unconstrained testing in critical tool conditions.

4th Steering Committee and General Assembly Meeting

published on 18th March 2010

On the 10th of March, the 4th Steering Committee Meeting and General Assembly has been hosted by the project partner HSG at the University of St. Gallen. As in the last Steering Committee Meetings, all workpackage leaders presented an overview of their ongoing and finished research activities and gave a quick outlook of the coming tasks. In addition to the project beneficiaries, a representative of the European Commission joined the meeting and gave vital comments for further development of TIPSS.

On the previous day, all beneficiaries met for individual workpackage workshops, especially regarding the Demonstration and Validation activities for the next half of the project duration. The collaboration platform will soon be implemented by TXT with strong support by the Bulgarian beneficiary the University of Rousse. In the afternoon, the project partners had a vivid discussion about the Intellectual Property Rights of jointly owned results, guided by Mr. Belle from the European Commission.

Launch of a new Mould Jini Generation

published on 15th February 2010

Because of the fast and complex communication routines that are developed as part of the research work within the TIPSS the Mould Jini supplier Feller has launched a new Mould Jini Generation (MJ4) redesigning most of the hardware and introducing a more powerful microprocessor. The new Mould Jini generation is now able to communicate via 100MB Ethernet (instead of 10MB) and has a processing speed which has more than doubled. The hardware design lays the foundation for Mould Jini to communicate with all kinds of sensors via Can-Bus.

3rd Steering Committee Meeting

published on 09th November 2009

The 3rd Steering Committee Meeting has been held on 8 October 2009 in Celje, Slovenia, organised by the beneficiary TECOS, Slovenian Tool and Die Development Centre. Aim of the meeting was to give all partners an overview of the ongoing activities and to discuss further steps for the project work. Following the mainly conceptual activities in the first part of the project, the software implementation in the workpackages 3 and 4 will be the focus in the coming months.

Previous to the meeting, some members did present their research results on the ICIT & MPT 2009, the 7th International Conference on Industrial Tools and Material Processing Technologies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Besides the project work, it was announced by RWTH, that the project coordination will from now on be carried out by Mr. Schittny, who takes over from Mr. Gaus starting with the 3rd Steering Committee Meeting.

The results of the TIPSS customers and toolmakers survey

published on 07th October 2009

Finally we have prepared the document with the results of the aforementioned surveys. They can be downloaded here.
TIPSS_Survey_Results.pdf

TIPSS survey closed

published on 15th June 2009

The TIPSS toolmaker-customer survey focussing on the demand for tool-related services has been successfully finished in May. The results are currently being analysed. By the end of June 2009 the findings will be published on the TIPSS website. The evaluation will give valuable insights into the current and future demand for tool related service as well as a overview of the global footprint of the tooling industry. The results of the survey form the base for the development of so-called industrial product-service-systems – hybrid products consisting of tools and related services. In order to enable small and medium sized toolmaker to offer tool-related services on a global scale, an advanced cooperation platform is developed in the current work packages of the TIPSS project.