The Information Technology for European Advancement (ITEA), part of the EUREKA cluster program, a Europe-wide research and development initiative, has awarded the Konecranes-led research project OPTIMUM with a Special Award of Excellence in all three nomination categories: Innovation, Standardization and Market impact – marking an exceptional achievement in the history of the awards. Focusing on engineering, commissioning and distributed control combined with human-machine interaction, the OPTIMUM research project paves the way for smart factories.

The OPTIMUM ITEA research project, launched in 2017, aimed for greater efficiency, data security and usability in future smart factories. Seventeen consortium partners from six countries were involved in the project, led by Konecranes’ Demag Cranes & Components.

OPTIMUM enables smart factory applications, based on indoor localization, distributed controls (DCP), 3D-engineering for visualization/simulation and real-time machine-to-machine and machine-to-human communication as well as innovative assistance functions.

The innovative assistance functions developed in OPTIMUM create the potential for cost-efficient and convenient assistance functions that are revolutionizing the efficiency of processes at factories.

The project consortium has implemented and validated the numerous technical artefacts and results in 15 demonstrations in four countries. Cranes, robots and autonomous driving vehicles were equipped with new assistance functions, such as ordering the machines to come to the operator or to go to a specified spot, as well as having a machine follow another. These functions can reduce assembly times in semi-autonomous processes, supporting more efficient resource utilization.

OPTIMUM achieved further successes in standardization. The project partners actively drove the development of a global uniform OPC UA (Open Platform Communication Unified Architecture) specification for cranes and hoists, which was evaluated as part of the OPTIMUM project.

“The outcome of this project exceeded our expectations by far. The findings list eight patent ideas, and national patent approvals have already been provided for three of them. In addition, a total of 12 new full-time jobs were created and 43 university papers were successfully completed by the consortium partners involved in the project. Above all, however, we have discovered ways to improve the competitiveness of the relevant industries even further,” says Project Lead Anja Fischer at Demag, part of Konecranes group.

Technological leadership is at the core of Konecranes’ operations, allowing the development of solutions for continuously evolving customer demands, and driving our positive societal impact. Our innovations create customer value and contribute to making material flows more sustainable, efficient and safer. The work is conducted independently, with start-up partners and through projects such as OPTIMUM.

Further information:

Anja Fischer, Project Lead, Demag Cranes & Components, Konecranes

Email: anja.fischer-kraus@demagcranes.com or phone: +49 0172 2744646

Further information for investors and analysts:

Kiira Fröberg, Vice President, Investor Relations, Konecranes

Email: kiira.froberg@konecranes.com or phone: +358 20 427 2050

This press release is available at our website konecranes.com

About ITEA
ITEA is the Eureka RD&I Cluster on software innovation, enabling a large international community of big industry, SMEs, start-ups, academia, research centres and customer organisations to collaborate in funded projects that turn innovative ideas into new businesses, jobs, economic growth and benefits for society. It is industry-driven and covers a wide range of business opportunities facilitated by digitisation like smart mobility, healthcare, smart cities and energy, manufacturing, engineering and safety & security.

About Konecranes
Konecranes is a world-leading group of Lifting Businesses, serving a broad range of customers, including manufacturing and process industries, shipyards, ports and terminals. Konecranes provides productivity enhancing lifting solutions as well as services for lifting equipment of all makes. In 2021, Group sales totaled EUR 3.2 billion. The Group has approximately 16,600 employees in around 50 countries. Konecranes shares are listed on the Nasdaq Helsinki (symbol: KCR).