FASyS, pioneering project in Europe, unites the Basque industry in the definition of the factory of the future

• With a 23.3€ million budget, the project will develop the key technology to deploy a factory model free of accidents as an essential element in improving competitiveness

• FASyS is one of the 18 major national strategic projects supported by CDTI at CENIT call 2009

• FASyS contributes to industrial sustainability through technology that allows the worker to have a major role in production processes

• A total of 13 companies and 14 research teams are part of the consortium that will carry out the project development

The Centre for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI, Spanish acronym) has approved the project FASyS, Absolutely Safe and Healthy Factory in the fifth call of the Program on National Strategic Consortia for Technical Research (CENIT-E). Nextel, with the initiative of Innovalia, coordinates the consortium, consisting of top level companies, such as Sociedad de Prevención Fremap, Siemens, Indra, Tecnologías de la Salud y el Bienestar, Datapixel, Eneo Tecnología, TRW, Doimak, Goratu, Jatorman, Trimek and Consultores de Automatización y Robótica. In addition, FASyS has the support of INVEMA and AFM..

The main objective of FASyS project is to develop a new model of factory to minimize risks to health and safety, and also to guarantee the welfare and comfort of workers in machining, handling and assembly factories. In the coming years, manufacturing faces a number of challenges as a result of highly dynamic industrial environments and highly sophisticated technologies. The workers will be increasingly exposed to diverse situations that require higher skills, so that efficient production in the factory of the future involves giving the employee central importance, of which it currently lacks. As a result, health and safety are synonymous with performance and productivity.

With a budget of 23.3 € million, FASyS lays the foundation for the Factory of the Future, competitive and sustainable. Different strategies to minimize the risks to which the worker is exposed during the production process will be developed. A FASyS factory is not a factory without risk, but a factory that has the technical, organizational and human resources to identify, detect, monitor and continuously manage risks related to health and safety throughout the entire life cycle of the plant.

The management of safety and health at work will become of special relevance in the next decade, because Europe has proposed a 25% reduction of occupational accidents in 2020. It is also important to remark that the focus of 90% of incidents has its origins in human behaviour and organization of work. That’s why the need for a new factory model appears, which, from design, includes comprehensive and personalized prevention of occupational risks.

FASyS includes the development of a series of integrated systems to carry out its objectives, like devices for monitoring the physical and psychological condition of the worker and the state of the workplace environment, efficient systems of communicating that information to improve its availability and richness.

In addition, technologies for processing and interpretation of data to characterize the activity of the worker with low uncertainty will be developed, and also intelligence analysis, decision making and prevention protocols and comprehensive personalized health monitoring for each worker. Finally, FASyS comprises collaborative manufacturing equipment in worker safety and management of processes that incorporate the human factor and provide information on risk behaviours as part of their improvement.