Article submitted by Paulo Lissa, Energy Technologist at Irish Manufacturing Research
- Tell us about IMR. What is your core business and role within the project?
Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) is a leading Research and Technology Organisation providing a portfolio of research, training, and consultancy services to Industry across the following four thematic pillars: Digitisation, Sustainable manufacturing, Design for Manufacturing, and Robotics and Automation. IMR works with leading global and indigenous brands to demystify, and derisk new and emerging technologies and to deliver high-impact collaborative research and services to enable advanced manufacturing across Ireland and the EU.
- Why did your organisation get involved in the ECOFACT project? How does this activity fit with the normal business of your organisation?
The key outcomes of ECOFACT aligns with the work undertaken in IMR as it across many areas of our services such as sustainability, energy efficiency and digitalisation.
In the project, IMR leads the communications and dissemination work package and our aim is to reach as many people as possible through sharing the exciting news and results from the ECOFACT project.
- How will the outputs of the ECOFACT project help production system energy performance?
ECOFACT puts your business in control of its energy and environmental performance. It enables you to get information at your fingertips and exactly when you need it on the entire life-cycle of your products.
It will help your business, plant, or factory by giving accurate, real-time data on how your process is performing and integrates energy awareness and emissions control into your production process.
- What are the technical challenges your work in ECOFACT is trying to overcome?
The main technical challenge for the ECOFACT project is the integration between the different systems that will be needed to be collaborate on just one platform. Companies may already have their legacy equipment or a number of systems that need to be incorporated as well, bringing additional complexity and the need for a unified solution.
- What positive impacts will the project have when complete?
As with all research projects, the key impact is that the results and learnings will enable future companies and projects to understand and implement dynamic LCA in their facilities. This will benefit them as they can make more informed and data-driven decisions to improve their impact on their energy use and environmental performance.
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