Public Funding for Lucchini Unipart Rail Limited

Remanufacturing is critical for Circular Economies, extending product life, creating jobs and revenue streams, and reducing waste, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. The main challenges that need to be addressed for successful remanufacturing in an industrial value chain or, more appropriately, value cycle are related to process, design, and business models. To meet these challenges, RESTORE will offer sustainable by design remanufacturing process and materials along with supporting tools for digitalization of remanufacturing ecosystem or value chain. RESTORE is aiming to advance potential SoA cladding technologies including laser direct energy deposition, plasma transfer arc process for sustainable remanufacturing application. To increase the deposition rate for large scale applications, we are aiming to develop a novel hybrid process combining laser and PTA process. We are aiming to manufacture wire feedstock with recycled content and develop a wire feeding system coupled with auxiliary feeding system to transfer machining swarf/unused powder directly into the melt pool, this will pave the way to zero waste and low-cost remanufacturing technology. For digitalization, we are also aiming to develop RESTORE platform, which will offer digital technologies and tools, which are digital technologies to increase process automation, recipe book and simulation tools for product and process optimisation, decision support framework, ecoDESIGN framework, blockchain enabled digital product passport, digital marketplace, business model templates, and collaborative spaces that can help to facilitate and streamline the remanufacturing process, providing greater traceability, transparency, and efficiency. The digital collaborative space will bring all relevant actors of the remanufacturing domain under one umbrella to share data and leverage a decision support framework and supporting tool, guiding the optimal remanufacturing of industrial products and components.

Remanufacturing is a major manufacturing challenge due to the variation in the condition of incoming parts, as well as the need to react quickly to varying demand, driven by factors including in-service failure (such as casualty wheel flats in the rail sector) which makes accurate forecasting very difficult. Moreover, the approach presents important supply chain and logistical challenges to ensure that parts are collected and returned at the right time and place to meet complex repair schedules, involving multiple activities against fixed deadlines. Existing repair methods often entail a series of manual tasks, undertaken in different locations, making precise control impossible. A different approach is required for heavily utilised high value equipment where "out-of-service" time must be minimised. In the AURORA project, the world's first flexible remanufacturing cell for rail components, combining high performance cladding, machining and in-process part inspection, to ensure the accuracy and integrity of parts, will be developed and demonstrated. This new approach will enable novel business models to be investigated.