Congratulations to successful teams!

During the EIT Manufacturing Summit Days 2022, the winners of the first Teaching Factories competition have been selected.

Congratulations to all student teams and especially to the winners! In addition to the winning teams, one team hasreceived a special mention by the jury.

The first prize went…

From left to right: Bálint József Horváth, Kristóf Tibor Horváth, Dániel Tóth, Martin Agg, Vanessza Bódi

… to the team from ELTE Informatikai Kar Savaria Műszaki Intézet in Hungary who presented their solution to the Intellimech challenge. The solver team of Dániel Tóth, Bálint Horváth, Kristóf Tibor Horváth, Martin Agg, and Vanessza Bódi showed the development of an online continuous quality inspection for electrical cables optimisation.

The second prize went…

From left to right: Fran Žužić, Filip Sentkiralji, Damir Narančić, Marija Vinojčić, Lorena Bijelić.

… to the team from the Croatian University CAS Lavoslav Ružička Vukovar who presented their solution to the Arneplant challenge. Filip Sentkiralji, Lorena Bijelić, Damir Narančić, Marija Vinojčić, and Fran Žužić showed how to reduce waste and embrace CE concepts in the manufacturing of shoe soles.

The third prize went…

Fotis Besamakis represented his team for the Teaching Factory competition. He is joined Karin Helmstaedt, Paola Fantini and Jaxier Gonzales on stage remotely.

… to the team from the University of Patras who presented their solution to the Protosfera challenge. Fotis Basamakis, Christos Glykos, Christos Manettas, Nikolas Porevopoulos, and Xanthi Bampoula showed how to develop a failure detection system for additive manufacturing machines.

Special mention…

… of the team from Ss. Cyril & Methodius University in Macedonia who presented their solution to the GE Avio challenge, awarded for gender inclusion and active participation during the initiative. Teodora Tanchevska, Оnur Amet, Damjan Ristovski, Daniela Stojanovska, and Mihaela Zlateska showed how to find best practices for enabling greener manufacturing of aero-engine products.

The jury watched the pitches remotely and selected the winners directly afterwards.

The winners were announced after the six finalists had pitched their solutions to a jury of experts. They had five minutes to define the challenge and enlighten the audience about the solution, followed by two minutes of a Q&A round with the jury members.

While the jury deliberated their selection, moderator Karin Helmstaedt interviewed Sotiris Makris, LMS Head of Robotics, Automation & Virtual Reality and Executive Director of the Teaching Factory Competence Center on the role of teaching factories for manufacturing. He is strongly in favour of Teaching Factories, as they enable collaboration between academia and industry which students, professors and industry representatives benefit from.

From left to right: Sotiris Makris, Alissa Zaccaria and Giuseppe Spanto

This point was also supported in the panel discussion with, Giuseppe Spanto, Managing Director of IS CLEAN AIR and Alissa Zaccaria, EU project coordinator Intellimech, both challenge owners, and Sotiris Makris. Alissa Zaccaria pointed to the importance of connecting research with real-life industry issues and Giuseppe Spanto mentioned that beyond the win-win situation related to the challenge, also the social value of interacting with different stakeholders could not be underestimated.

Both challenge owners recommended to try our teaching factories for the student perspectives, which brought out-of-the-box thinking to the table and were also unimpaired and unconstrained by previous experience.