Corporate
This section gives voice to companies and organisations that have worked with INESC TEC in various projects and activities. A good relationship and good examples are fundamental ingredients for science and technology to serve society with equal amounts of enthusiasm and professionalism.
Tiago Faro, CTO and Member of the Board of Adira
"The collaboration between ADIRA and INESC TEC was extremely relevant as it made it possible for us to reach a competitive market position, through highly innovative technological components. We hope to continue our collaboration with INESC TEC in the future."
History of the relationship between the company and INESC TEC
ADIRA has been collaborating with academia for over three decades. This relationship has intensified over the last years, where multiple collaborations have been established with R&D institutions, such as INESC TEC. Over the last five years, we have worked on various projects together with INESC TEC, namely: AMF – ADIRA Micro Fábrica; PRODUTECH PSI – New Products and Services for the Manufacturing Industry, and PRODUTECH PTI – New Manufacturing Processes and Innovative Technologies; SysMAP – Modular and Adaptable Manufacturing Systems, PLM4all – Low-cost Toolbox to help manage the Life Cycle of Equipment Goods, which I will be focusing on in this text due its innovative features.
Business areas
Metalworking
Year in which the institution collaborated with INESC TEC
Since 2010.
Title of the project
AMF; PRODUTECH PSI and PRODUTECH PTI; SysMAP; PLM4all
INESC TEC Centre(s) with which the company collaborated
CESE – Centre for Enterprise Systems Engineering
Project manager (INESC TEC)
António Correia Alves, Luís Carneiro
Statement about the Project
As part of project PLM4all, we developed a platform that can be used to manage the life cycle of mechatronic equipment. The platform PLM4all contains different application modules that perform different activities throughout the life cycle of the product, as well as transversal modules that support the activities, collaborative processes and information management, assuring CAD ERP connectivity. This makes the information exchanged between these two systems more consistent.
Similarly to what happens in all consortium projects, during the negotiation process all partners have aligned their expectations. This project was developed in a relevant area where ADIRA did not have any core competences. We have identified an opportunity to combine an innovative management tool, suited to the needs of an organisation with a vast and complex product catalogue, with the know-how of ADIRA.
Introducing a powerful tool such as the PLM4all to manage the life cycle of a product allows us to manage the products in a more efficient and effective way, assuring their traceability and reducing time-to-market. This guarantees that the entire life cycle of the product is covered, from design to end of life, thus making it possible to significantly improve the global performance of the organisation.
Even though we have started using the PLM4all recently at ADIRA, we have already noticed an impact on the organisation. For instance, the performance of several processes has improved, such as client requests. The requests are submitted through the ticket system, which is used to monitor the technical support in sales. The introduction of tickets makes it possible for us to respond to requests more quickly, thus leading to significant improvements in terms of the pre-sales service.
Moreover, when it comes to managing internal activities, the project management mechanism incorporated in the PLM4all made it possible to expedite project management by milestones, according to a method suited to the needs of the organisation, which is neither global nor too specific. I would also like to stress the dashboard where each user can visualise, in an intuitive way, the work to be done. The information is duly categorised and organised. The view of the product’s life cycle management is also very valuable for the organisation, because we can see all the activities of the product’s life cycle in an aggregated way.
The collaboration between ADIRA and INESC TEC was extremely relevant as it made it possible for us to reach a competitive market position, through highly innovative technological components. We hope to continue our collaboration with INESC TEC in the future.
