Offside
Lado B

A world sprinkled with salsa

Corporate

INESC TEC, in the words of our partners – Statement by Armindo Oliveira from EGITRON.

Limelight

"Knowing that, due to the importance of an institution like INESC TEC, the creation of the most innovative solutions are expected from us is really challenging.", João Pedro Aguiar (CPES)

Serious Thinking

"The adoption of advanced technologies by companies is a complex process and has an impact in several aspects of their management.", Ana Simões (CESE)

Gallery of the Uncommon

Do you think there are many uncommon moments in a research institution? There are more uncommon moments than you think: so many in fact!

Where are you now?

Every month INESC TEC sends highly qualified individuals into the market...

Jobs 4 the Boys & Girls

In this section, the reader may find reference to public announcements made by INESC TEC offering grants, contracts and other opportunities.

Biptoon

More scenes of how life goes merrily on...

 
 

Corporate

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.

 

Armindo Oliveira, General Manager, egitron

  • "The professionalism, rigour and technical knowledge were aspects that were always present in all researchers who were involved in this project and who had a very important role in meeting the goals of the project."

History of the relationship between the company and INESC TEC

Over the last couple of years, EGITRON has increased the level of collaboration with entities of the National Scientific System in order to complement the necessary and inherent research work to the development of new products for the industry. The relationship with INESC TEC already exists for several years now, with the establishment of joint projects in order to identify innovative technology and to develop new approaches to solve existing problems in the most various areas.

The cooperation with INESC TEC started in 2009 with the CORDYP project and still goes on with other projects and challenges.

Business areas

Engineering and Industrial Automation

Title of the Project

PRECISIONcork – Measurement and Online Control of Key Process Parameters and Product Quality

INESC TEC Centres with which the company collaborated

Centre for Enterprise Systems Engineering (CESE)
Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIIS)

Project managers (INESC TEC)

Hélio Mendonça (CRIIS)
Luís Guardão and Luís Costa (CESE)

Statement about the Project

The R&D CORDYP project, which started in 2009 and was developed in co-promotion, comprised several activities of industrial research and development considering the creation of a new technologically advanced product that was based on cutting-edge technology (state-of-the-art LASER technology), oriented to the manufacturing and finishing industry of cork stoppers. 

However, from all the projects in which EGITRON worked in partnership with INESC TEC, the last one must be highlighted: PRECISIONcork - Measurement and Online Control of Key Process Parameters and Product Quality. This project, which started in 2016, was supported by Portugal2020 and was co-promoted by other public and private entities.

The project aims at creating a disruptive solution in terms of equipment goods, in this specific case for the cork manufacturing industry and oriented to online and real-time control of key process parameters and of quality in the manufacturing and finishing of cork stoppers.

The solution proposed by the PRECISIONcork project allows the radical change of the current practices in terms of quality control in the manufacturing of cork stoppers. By promoting an autonomous solution, in line with the characteristic parameters related to the manufacturing of cork stoppers, such as moisture measurement, density, diameter, length, etc., and the consequent performance (closed loop control) in the production equipment involved, it will be possible to explore a preventive and process control approach with a view to a higher quality of the final product. This solution allows the development of “zero-defect” strategies and also enhances the implementation of robust traceability mechanisms, allowing to meet legal and market requirements considered to be critical these days.

The PRECISIONcork project involved two INESC TEC’s centres: CRIIS and CESE.

Under this project, these two development centres played a very important role by identifying the procedures and technology capable of meeting the PRECISIONcork requirements. From the obtained results, we can highlight the following:

CRIIS: Identification of the technology and development of systems for non-contact moisture measurement of cork stoppers and with a better precision than the traditional methods. The identified technology and the developed system allow to revolutionise the current methods and to optimise the production process. This development also had the technical knowledge of Professor Henrique Salgado, involving a third entity, in this case, FEUP.

CRIIS was also involved in the development of a vision system capable of acquiring the main dimensions of the cork stopper.

CESE: One of the main requirements of this project was to integrate the measurement systems to be developed with the machines of the production system, creating a closed loop in the system. This allows an approach to the Industry 4.0 and the real-time performance in order to develop “zero-defect” strategies. In this context, CESE developed an IoT platform that allows to integrate several equipment with different communication languages with remote applications, such as statistical process control. This approach allowed the interconnection of the purchasing systems with the production machines acting upon them in real-time and regardless of the communication protocol that they use.

Cork coating treatment analysis: a very important research within the PRECISIONcork project was carried out in conjunction with INESC TEC’s Optics Department, based in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto, in order to identify the homogeneity and thickness of the coat treatment of cork stoppers. The technology used was based on laser and spectroscopy, which proved to be a technique suitable to the proposed goals.

What is your opinion on the experience working with INESC TEC?

INESC TEC plays an absolutely vital role in this kind of partnerships that it establishes with private entities, enabling a level of technical research that would be difficult to achieve within the Portuguese Small and Medium-Sized enterprises. This kind of work allows to identify approaches and completely innovative products that revolutionise the industry, some of them with prominent and patentable scientific performances.

The professionalism, rigour and technical knowledge were aspects that were always present in all researchers who were involved in this project and who had a very important role in meeting the goals of the project.

What is the possibility of future collaborations with INESC TEC?

When this project ends, there are other approaches and developments that EGITRON will want to further develop and that will involve INESC TEC in its implementation. Throughout this project, some alternatives have emerged that we now want to deepen in order to develop technologically advanced products that are capable of competing with solutions that currently exist in the market considering the obtained results.

There are also other projects and areas that we want to investigate and we’ll certainly consult INESC TEC, which we can already consider it to be a partner of EGITRON in the development of quality and innovative products.