An Austrian research center for smart product creation processes

The CDPs – Austrian Center for Digital Production - mission is to be the one-stop-shop Austrian Research Center for digital (intelligent or smart) product creation processes in the discrete manufacturing industries ranging from product development and engineering design to production system development, production, deployment and product utilization. This is fully aligned with the EU-goals for the renaissance of production industries in Europe by enhancing the skills as well competitiveness of production companies in Austria resulting in the creation of new jobs.
Manufacturers of machines, tools, automation equipment, software and accompanying services cooperating with the CDP have the opportunity to prepare their systems for future requirements of networked production and production platforms.

Security and Safety

Within this cooperation the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences will carry out two research projects in collaboration with a major local industrial company. The projects will confront two key aspects of a rearrangement of production, IT-security and safety and integrated supply chain management. 
Besides organizational challenges, technical synergies need to be created and especially IT security related challenges have to be addressed. Therefore the strategy implies breaking new ground with potential cyber threats and creating a reliable and secure solution. The main task will be to convert a flat and historically grown IT system to a modern and secure Industry 4.0 ready infrastructure. 

Integrated Supply Chain Management

Today's supply chains ask for new technological infrastructure to ensure efficiency, transparency and processing of information. The “Contrax” web application is a supply-chain-management optimization platform in order to handle production processes of sub-contractors in industrial production with minimal effort. Using a secure network interface and software architecture it provides sub-contractors with production data of the manufacturing company, otherwise not available to them. Therefore, delivery orders can be managed in a more efficient manner.