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Smart Industrial Concept! – Doctoral school on the digitalization of industrial processes

In the course of the participation of the SIC! doctoral program in Annex XVIII, respectively the initiative "Today in the Lab - Tomorrow in Energy" of the IEA (International Energy Agency), Verena Halmschlager presented her dissertation.

The first SIC! - Smart Industrial Concept! - PhD program ran from 2017 to 2021. It focused on the introduction of digitization aspects of industrial processes and related applications.

In this context, the SIC!-ring lecture was well established:  Experts from several university departments and from industry dealt with various aspects of energy optimization.

The 8 PhD students were divided into two groups, with each group focusing on the following topics.

Group 1: This group created an information model which served as a central knowledge base and general tool for data management which allowed for a more systematic approach to data-driven modeling, analysis and the simulation of component models.

By improving data consistency and specifying data semantics, errors were reduced and development work improved. The main challenges arose from heterogeneous data sources, poor data quality and availability, compatibility and interoperability of system components and implicit domain knowledge, which had to be provided explicitly.

Group 2:  This group worked on a targeted run time system. The targeted runtime system comprised the actual system for optimizing the operation of the energy supply for production processes at a specific industrial site. It is intended to ensure the optimum operating state both in extreme load situations and in the event of load fluctuations at the plant and machine level. For this purpose, a suitable (hierarchical/cooperative) controller structure was developed.

Through various lectures and presentations, the PhD program was made accessible to the wider public. In 2019, for example, the event "Blickpunkt Forschung"  was held. The resulting white paper "Digitalization in Industry - An Austrian Perspective" should be noted.

We would like to thank our project partners for their collaboration and contribution. Without their support, the scientific output would not have been of such high quality or as extensive.

Outputs included over 50 publications, incorporating  20  journal articles, 15  of which were Q1 publications.