Project · STRATEGUS
STRATEgic GUide to Smart manufacturing
A Horizon Europe MSCA Global Fellowship developing digital-twin, simulation and scheduling methods for safely integrating new technologies into existing manufacturing plants, in collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Period2023 – 2026StatusActiveFundingHorizon Europe · Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship · European Commission · grant 101109243
Objective
STRATEGUS (STRATEgic GUide to Smart manufacturing) studies how established production plants can adopt new technologies without requiring a clean-sheet redesign. Retrofitting an operating factory introduces dependencies between legacy equipment, new sensors and software, communication networks and production constraints; the project develops understandable methods and a software architecture for reasoning about these interactions before and during deployment.
STRATEGUS is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship under Horizon Europe, grant agreement 101109243, running from 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2026. The European Commission records the University of Verona as coordinator and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the partner organisation for the global-fellowship phase.
Digital twin and simulation
The project builds a digital twin of the production plant: a structured digital representation that connects sensor data with mathematical models of machines and processes. The twin provides a common basis for timing analysis, prediction, simulation and evaluation of control strategies, so that changes can be assessed against a model of the existing plant rather than introduced blindly on the physical line.
Models are inspired by multimode-system theory, representing equipment through operating modes and mathematical descriptions of how each operation changes the state of the product and the production process. This supports heterogeneous systems whose behaviour changes with configuration, workload and operating conditions.
The Strategist
A central research element is the Strategist, a meta-scheduler that uses information from the digital twin to estimate the timing of events in the physical plant and optimise production activities. Its role includes reacting to order arrivals, unexpected events and faults while respecting the constraints represented by the plant models.
The broader collaboration links ESD expertise in modelling, simulation and mixed-signal/networked cyber-physical systems with research at UNC Chapel Hill on embedded and cyber-physical system design. Public presentations of STRATEGUS identify Enrico Fraccaroli, Franco Fummi and Samarjit Chakraborty as the principal researchers in this collaboration.
Official records
News
Award
ESD Group: Group member awarded with Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship
The European Commission awarded Enrico Fraccaroli a three-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (Global Fellowship) for the STRATEGUS project.