OPTIMISED (Operational Planning Tool Interfacing Manufacturing Integrated Simulations with Empirical Data) was a 3-year, 10-party consortium project within the Horizon 2020 “Factories of the Future” framework, fully funded by the EU, in the topic area of ICT-enabled modelling, simulation, analytics and forecasting technologies.

OPTIMISED developed digital twins and decision support systems using IIOT solutions to create optimised and reactive planning systems across three industrial demonstrators.

Laing O’Rourke (LOR) were the lead party with Keonys SAS (France), Advanced Data Processing GmbH (Germany), the University of Nottingham (UK), Alstom Transport S.A. (France), SimPlan AG (Germany), Ideko S.COOP (Spain), Goimek S. COOP (Spain), Smarter Grid Solutions Ltd (UK) and Dassault Systemes SE (France) making up the partners for this consortium project.

LOR secured our services to provide Project Management and Project Support after being impressed by our expertise in handling challenging assignments and our flexible engagement model.

From the outset we made it clear that we would support the client with additional non-routine effort as required, which was really important to the client.

The technical challenges were high, since this was a complex project and the solution required novel approaches to solve challenging, real-world operational and manufacturing planning problems, and demanded a high degree of integration between different software components and multiple partners. The outcome was to be a solution that had not previously been successfully achieved.

With proven experience in engineering and project management within high technology areas, we knew that implementing a robust and effective project management approach would be key to ensuring the success of this project. Furthermore, early implementation is critical to setting expectations and gaining traction. This is where expectations and reality can come into conflict: we faced the typical challenge to get all parties onto the same page and to reach a compromise that addressed both local (partner) and global (whole project and EU) objectives.

Additionally, we faced the typical project management challenges of staff turnover, changes in partners’ business strategy and resource constraints.

The project delivered on its 9 project objectives and achieved excellent recognition and feedback across the industry and from the EU, having won awards in several categories.