Events of the International Center for Networked, Adaptive Production

At the ICNAP Study Kick-off 2025, held online, participants were introduced to the latest research topics and project goals for the year. Presentations covered key areas such as secure industrial product development using zero-trust principles, sensor integration in brownfield environments, and holistic production optimization. Further sessions focused on the use of digital process twins and the regulatory approval of AI systems for quality control. The event set the foundation for collaboration and innovation in the new study cycle.

Our annual Autumn Meeting showcased the third milestone presentations on the five studies of 2024. Online and over two days, ICNAP members have been exploring exclusive insights of the International Centers' activities throughout the year that refer to the topics of production digitalization. 

Beside the studies, we also had the chance to attend the presentation of Denys Plakhotnik from ModuleWorks on the “Evolution of CAM Systems towards Digital Twin Paradigm." Thank you for the insights!

This year we had the pleasure of holding our annual Summer Meeting with our valued partner in Italy, MBDA, in the beautiful city of Naples. The event included not only presentations of our five current studies, but also a series of workshops that provided valuable insights to the participants. Exciting presentations were also given by our members

Our Spring Meeting, two days full of online activities for our community members. The event was filled with inspiring keynotes from a total of four speakers. The topics ranged from IoT to edge-to-cloud architectures and 5G.  

Exciting discussions and updates on our five current studies were also part of the Spring Meeting.

Our two-day kick-off this week set the stage for an eventful year of research. Inspiring discussions, insightful feedback, and a shared commitment to making the most of the upcoming 5 new studies.

The topics of the studies cover a wide range: from AI to IT security, digital twin and dark factory. Promising results are expected!

At the last Annual Meeting of our ICNAP community we had exciting workshops around the topic of Industry 4.0 and concluded the five annual studies of that year. The whole ICNAP community met in Aachen to be immersed in a wide spectrum of cutting-edge topics in digitalization. Highlights were the keynote speeches from Stefan Hoppe, President and Executive Director of the OPC Foundation, and Yves Paindaveine, standardization expert from the Eruopean Commission. 

On November 15th, we held two workshops relating to current ICNAP studies at Georg Fischer Machining Solutions in Biel. First, André Gilerson lead a workshop on the topic of "The Digital Twin Demonstrator - Bringing the Concept to Life". In our second workshop, Jan Hendrik Hellmich explored the topic "Industrialization of Aritifical Intelligence in Production". These two interactive workshops provided great insights into the work done in both studies over the past year.

The second Milestone Meeting was hosted in Munich by our partner MTU on the 20^th and 21^st of June. Here, community members enjoyed unique agenda items, such as an exlusive tour of the MTU museum. The two days were packed with presentations on the interim results of our current research projects and engaging discussions.

Over two days we attended this year's AWK (Aachener Werkzeugmaschinen Kolloqium). Those days were filled with insightful presentations, talks, and valuable opportunities to meet and interact with top-class experts from across the industry.

Empower Green Production - that was the topic of this year's AWK and that is also the key topic we want to focus on together in our community by jointly pushing forward digitalization in production. 

We had a fantastic weekendat our annual ICNAP Hackathon!

Motivated student teams worked all weekend on three challenging tasks from ICNAP industry partners MTU Aero Engines, IconPro - A.I. Solutions and Philips Engineering Solutions. Topics included using AI to classify good and bad parts as well as synthetic data generation.

Congratulations to all the winners!