Urban Circular Assembly and Services Lab (Urban CIRCLAS Lab)

• Subject Area: Production Technology
• Term: Funded in 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 466326583

The „Urban Circular Cloud Assembly and Services Lab“ (Urban CIRCLAS Lab) is the basis for research in the field of handling and assembly technnology which contributes to sustainable and resilient circular economy. The considered type of circular economy is founded on granular, regionally configured production ressources, which reach economic scaling effects through globalised platform economy patterns. The overarching research hypothesis is that principles from platform economy in production engineering are viable to establish such value streams. The body of work available and ongoing research covers predominantly the topics of value stream design, platfrom design and additive manufacturing. This shall be extended by results in assembly, through-life service, end-of-life treatment and handling, on the basis of the the Urban CIRCLAS Lab. In particular, if future cloud production shall adress also circular economies of more complex products, these aspects need to be mastered.The fields of assembly, through-life services and product upgrades are especially important for research, because the complexity of all previous production steps accumulate here. To maximize cost efficiency in these value creation steps is essential for circular cloud production. The lead proposer of the Urban CIRCLAS Lab plans to contribute fundamental research results with respect to process-oriented product and process design, to rationalization methods for urban manufacturing, for efficient design and orchestration of tailored handling components and systems, to digital interfacing with platform architectures, and with respect to digital environments for the human worker in such contexts.Urban CIRCLAS Lab consists of handling systems, measurement equipment, manual assembly equipment, and cloud-based IT infrastructure. This shall feature the small- to medium-series assembly, repair, upgrade, and end-of-life handling and demonstrate the benefits of platform scaling effects. The Lab is embedded into the Produktionstechnisches Zentrum Berlin, in the context of which an ecosystem of urban production mini-infrastructures will be simulated. Overall, the Urban CIRCLAS Lab is a production research infrastructure which demonstrates circularity aspects based on platform economy in a tangible way.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Urban Circular Assembly and Services Lab (Urban CIRCLAS Lab)
• Instrumentation Group: 2320 Greif- und Hebewerkzeuge, Verladeeinrichtungen
• Applicant Institution: Technische Universität Berlin
• Leader: Professor Dr.-Ing. Franz Dietrich