As part of the overall network-wide training for iCircular3, the project will hold yearly conferences. The first conference took place on Monday 22 nd April 2024 and this conference was the first opportunity to get to know all the Doctoral Candidates and was therefore closed to project members only. Future project conferences will be open to a wider audience to participate/attend. As not all Doctoral Candidates were able to attend UCD, Dublin, Ireland as intended, the conference took place online. Consortium representatives from both industry and academia attended. Project Coordinator, Dr Pezhman Ghadimi, welcomed all to the project and each Doctoral Candidate then gave a 10 minute presentation outlining their personal background, their individual research on the project, training and secondments, as well as the envisaged collaborations and benefits of iCircular3 for communities, societies and to themselves. The Year 1 Conference was a great start to the planned training programme and put the foundation in for project beneficiaries and Doctoral Candidates in building those important relationships that are so crucial to the success of the project.
On Tuesday 7 th May 2024, iCircular3 welcomed Project Officer, Nina Poumpalova to University College Dublin (UCD) in Dublin, Ireland for the 1-day Mid-Term Review (MTR) meeting. The meeting was attended by the consortium of academic and industry leaders and by the Doctoral Candidates. The purpose of the meeting is to review the progress of the project, in particular the recruitment of Doctoral Candidates and to discuss any deviations.
Overview of the agenda:
08:30 Introduction and meeting purpose REA Project Officer
08.40 Tour de table Consortium
08.50 Project Officer Presentation REA Project Officer
09.10 Coordinator's Report Project Coordinators
09.50 BREAK
10.15 Doctoral Candidates Presentations Doctoral Candidates
12.00 LUNCH
12.30 Restricted session with Doctoral Candidates REA Project Officer
13.00 Feedback and open discussion REA Project Officer
14.00 CLOSE
(Top to bottom, and left to right) Prof Robert Shorten from ICL, Dr William Sandersfrom IOTA, Diarmuid Conchubhair from FMCI, Prof Nikolaos Papakostas from UCD, Masood Ahmad Doctoral Candidate at IOTA, Dr Vanajah Siva from JTH, Prof Vincent Hargaden from UCD, Waqas Ahmed Doctoral Candidate at JTH, Pouria Mohamadzadeh Oqaz Doctoral Candidate at ICL, Hans-Ake Sundberg from HUS, Gemma Watts from UCD, Nina Poumpalova EU Project Officer, Thomas Campbell from KUKA, Dr Pezhman Ghadimi from UCD, Fernanda Rodriguez-Romo Doctoral Candidate at UCD, Mojdeh Morshedi Doctoral Candidate at UCD, Aaron Humberto Rios-Villanueva Doctoral Candidate at KUKA, Dr Elena Dieckmann from ICL and Brian Cooney from KUKA. The other Doctoral Candidates (Sepide Kordestany, Farzaneh Pouralireza, Mohammad Rajabzadeh) joined the meeting online and were not present for the photo.)
The first network-wide training took place at UCD, Dublin, Ireland on Wednesday 8 th May to Friday 10 th May 2024, and was delivered in person but also streamed for those that were unable to attend in person due to visa issues. The last day of the training programme was delivered online for all on Monday 13 th May 2024 to keep accommodation costs for all to a minimum. This was an industry led module, with KUKA opening the training on the Wednesday and input from all industry and academic beneficiaries. The aim was to give all Doctoral Candidates a range of experiences of different industries and different types of products. An overview of the training is outlined below:
Ideation tools for transformative product lifecycles at the intersection of Industry 4.0 and Circular Economy (Dr Dieckmann - ICL)
Voice of the customer - Impowering the Customer (Brian Cooney and Thomas Campbell - KUKA)
Sustainability Strategy (Jonas Willaredt - HUS)
Quality feedback from customers (Hans-Ake Sundberg - HUS)
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) (Dr Siva - JTH)
Quality improvement and control (Dr Siva - JTH)
Design of Experiment training fundamentals (Hans-Ake Sundberg - HUS)
DOE - Example from Husqvarna (Hans-Ake Sundberg - HUS)
DoE Lab (Dr Pezhman Ghadimi - UCD)
SPC - control charts and lean manufacturing (Dr Siva - JTH)
SPC - control charts and lean manufacturing, example from saw chain production. (Hans-Ake Sundberg - HUS)
Practical activities and case studies in Robotics (Thomas Campbell and Brian Cooney - KUKA)
Distributed Ledger Technologies and use cases related to the circular economy and EVs (Dr Sanders - IOTA)
Intellectual Property, Product certification and compliance KUKA (Brian Cooney and Thomas Campbell - KUKA)
How Husqvarna is working with IP-management (Ulf Wallin - HUS)
Day 1. Wednesday 8th May 2024.
Day 2. Thursday 9th May 2024
Day 3. Friday 10th May 2024