NEWS
4th Newsletter

6th XMANAI´s General Assembly
At the end of September, XMANAI has a hybrid General Assembly at Limassol hosted by Suite5.
In this meeting, each partner showed how are the developments of the project and it was made some action lists with the next steps.

Explainability in AI: the connecting factor for effective digitalisation in manufacturing industry
Explainability has proven to be a key element in boosting AI adoption in different industrial fields thanks to its glass box approach providing transparent and understandable insights on algorithm decisions and results. Given its strategic role in improving economic growth, Explainable AI contributes to advance cooperation between different types of stakeholders, including not only industrial companies and associations but also European projects and clusters. The aim of creating a collaborative network in XAI domain is to explore the most effective pathways to the digital integration and interoperability of manufacturing systems. This goal can be achieved by identifying relevant cross-cutting factors and key enablers to promote the implementation of best practices concerning technological innovation in industry.
These core topics have been thoroughly addressed during the European Workshop for AI Pathway held on the 13th of June 2022 in Brussels and organised by Connected Factories, an initiative focused on bolstering digitalisation in manufacturing supported by EFFRA: The European Factories of the Future Research Association. TXT attended the event due to the strong connection of XMANAI with twin projects focused on similar approach on AI benefits, such as leveraging AI to promote Circular Economy routes, enable man-robot collaboration, optimize data driven production management and determine an effective pathway for human-centred manufacturing in Industry 5.0.
Complementary issues were discussed at the Now8! Event, a series of meetings set up by Confindustria Bergamo a Lombardy Digital Innovation Hub to disseminate the latest technological advancements for industrial applications. TXT was invited as guest speaker to relate on the importance of innovative solutions based on explainable AI as a key enabler for digital transition.

Learn more about Connected Factories and EFFRA:
EFFRA | European Factories of the Future Research Association
Learn more about Now8 Event:
https://www.confindustriabergamo.it/comunicazioni/news?action=topdf&id=131594
July 14, 2022
A Matter of Quality! Data for Trustworthy AI in Manufacturing
Last month Data Week 2022 organized a virtual event where it talked about A Matter of Quality! Data for Trustworthy AI in Manufacturing.
In the Smart Manufacturing Industry, there are three scenarios related to Data Spaces: the Smart Autonomous Factory pathway, Hyperconnected Factory pathway, and Collaborative, Product-Service pathway.
Fenareti Lampathaki, that works in Suite5, an XMANAI´s partner, talked about Data for AI in Manufacturing and synthetic data generation.
You can find the complete vídeo here: https://lnkd.in/ea4QS8jM

5th XMANAI´s General Assembly
After 18 months, XMANAI has the 1st hybrid General Assembly at POLIMI and most of the consortium is finally meeting in person.
On the second day of the meeting, we will enter deep into the XAI Catalogue Status & Planning, as well as the progress of our pilot demonstrators.

Industrialization approaches to explainability in manufacturing
Yesterday’s Digital Factory Alliance (DFA) event XMANAI played an important role being the central point of discussion.
From the Industrial Advisory Board, we had the pleasure to receive feedback from Chris Decubber (EFFRA), Michela Magas (Innovation advisor for EC and G7 leaders), and from sister project STAR, John Soldatos (INTRASOFT).
In the open discussion, valid points were raised towards the usage of AI in smart factories and its path towards technology transfer that can enrich and reinforce the XMANAI – EU Project along its path until completion.
Thanks to Oscar Lazaro and Cristina Martínez Hernández from Innovalia Association for conducting this valuable session.

4th XMANAI´s General Assembly
On the 15th and 16th of February, we had the 4th XMANAI Virtual General Assembly.
In that meeting, all partners presented the progress of the project in different work packages.

AI-MAN Workshop on October
In october the ai-man workshop was held and you can watch the full event here.
In this workshop was illustrated how Industrial AI can be applied and which are benefits and impacts.
Artificial Intelligence is a set of applications that provide insights and suggestions, useful for creating more value for differents industries, and in this case, on manufacturing
This it will necessary to compete in this sector and in order to bring European industry to the highest levels of prestige, global excellence and competitiveness of the future.
XMANAI was represented in this workshop by our project technical coordinator, Fenareti Lampathaki.

XMANAI Virtual General Assembly
Today all XMANAI´s partners had together in our 3rd XMANAI´s General Assembly.
It was an online meeting where it was presenting the progress of the project in all work packages.

Did you know that the XMANAI project has a youtube channel?
The XMANAI Project has a youtube channel!
Check out the XMANAI brand new video, explaining the project and its objectives.
XMANAI´s project at ICIE 2020 conference
Ruben Costa, a Knowledgebiz´s Director, presented the XMANAI´s project in an invited lecture at ICIE 2020 Conference, Guimarães, Portugal.
It was a mixed event (remote and physical) where he explained XMANAI and how it will be an important help to industries that want to improve their results with artificial intelligence.

Don't miss the 1st XMANAI Scientific Workshop @ICE-Conference 2021
Title: Data Management and Use of Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is finding its way into a broad range of industries, manufacturing amongst them. Indeed, together with big data techniques, the sorts of decisions and predictions being made by AI-enabled systems is becoming much more profound, and in many cases, critical to success and profitability. Machine learning’s inherent advantages in finding anomalies in the production and packaging processes have significant potential to increase throughput and quality of products as well as to reduce machinery downtime and maintenance costs. In the cusp of Industry 5.0 that brings human-machine collaboration and personalization in the foreground, the need for diffusion of data management, cyber physical systems, and AI to solve existing and future manufacturing problems across diverse innovation pathways towards the 2025 Factories of the Future has never been greater.
Supported by four European funded projects (XMANAI , i4Q , INEDIT and ZDMP ) with a focus on different aspects of data management and the use of artificial intelligence in the manufacturing domain, the workshop brings together data scientists and industrial representatives from the digital manufacturing domain alongside the researchers from the areas of smart manufacturing, enterprise information systems, IoT, and AI. The workshop will promote discussion and knowledge sharing about the state-of-the-art developments and research perspectives for the next 5 years in the broad area of Connected Smart Factories.
For more information please visit: https://www.ice-conference2021.org

2nd XMANAI´s General Assembly
Yesterday, we had our 2nd XMANAI’s General Assembly with all partners presenting the progress of the work packages and the project as a whole. We are happy to see things moving towards the defined goals.

1st AI-MAN Workshop
XMANAI was represented by our project coordinator, Michele Sesana and technical coordinator, Fenareti Lampathaki in the first series of ICT-38 Projects Cluster (AI-MAN) workshops on Friday, May 7th 2021. It was organised by our brother project, the STAR project (star-ai.eu).
Nine projects funded under the ICT-38-2020 Call focus on integrating state-of-the-art AI technologies in the manufacturing domain. The AI-MAN cluster, in which the projects joined their forces supported by EFFRA and the Connected Factories project (www.effra.eu/connectedfactories), aims at exploiting synergies between the projects and increasing their impact.
This first workshop aimed to make the participants aware of each project’s objectives, activities and technologies that are being developed and to further expand the potential areas of collaboration. The next steps include, among other, making full use of the mutual communication and dissemination actions, participating in joint events, to organise a series of joint open/public workshops, collaborating in production and sharing the AI assets, joint publications and common standardization activities. A specific shared space for the cluster is also envisaged and the work for its implementation is already under way.

XMANAI participates to the DMP Cluster meeting organized by EFFRA
XMANAI is actively engaged in collaboration activities with other research and innovation projects and industrial working groups. This February, Michele Sesana, the project coordinator presented XMANAI at the DMP Cluster cluster meeting, organised by EFFRA (European Factories of the Future Research Association) in the context of the Connected Factories coordination and support action. As a consequence , EFFRA agreed to create an ICT-38 mailing list for the XMANAI brother and sister projects and to host further collaboration between these projects. We are eager for further actions!

The XMANAI – EU Project has just started!
Our virtual Kick-Off meeting is ongoing with our coordinator Michele Sesana presenting the project. Do you want to know more about Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Manufacturing? Follow us and keep posted on the updates… We are very excited about this initiative!!
