Research



ServTech is in the center of different European and international networks of excellence.

Header image: © Andrew Rich, iStock

In varying consortia with leading industries and research organisations in Europe, ServTech has acquired substantial research funds for large-scale research projects from the European Commission. They include FP7 IP projects, such as the Management of Dynamic Manufacturing Networks (IMAGINE), and Horizon 2020 projects, such as An Integrated Platform for Managing the Product-Service Lifecycle (ICP4Life) and QUALITOP.

ServTech’s expertise lies in:

  • service engineering methodologies for advanced service-based applications,
  • the use of business process management techniques in conjunction with SOA,
  • business process compliance techniques for regulatory purposes,
  • on-demand declarative languages and techniques for empowering users, and
  • event analysis and processing for service-enabled applications.

ServTech is committed to pooling, coordinating and consolidating research activities in service science and innovation all across Europe. It focuses on real-world challenges that demand the use of multiple conceptual, methodological and substantive approaches.

Research & Development Projects

ServTech has been successful in acquiring research funds from European resources.
Besides a range of journal and conference publications, all research results achieved in these projects are openly accessible to the public through a list of research reports, called deliverables in the EU jargon. They are also available on the related project websites.

HORIZON 2020

In January 2020, ServTech began a new research and innovation project in the medical sector: QUALITOP. This project aims at monitoring multidimensional aspects of QUAlity of Life after cancer ImmunoTherapy. It will design and develop a European digital smart medical platform that uses big data analytics, AI, and simulation modeling to collect and aggregate efficiently and effectively masses of quality of life data about patients who have undergone cancer Immuno-therapy treatment. The platform will help monitor these patients’ health status, conduct causal inference analyses, create harm-reduction recommendations for the patients, and store, reuse, and improve and disseminate medical findings.

In December 2018, ServTech concluded the EU Horizon 2020 project ICP4Life (An Integrated Collaborative Platform for Managing the Product-Service Engineering Lifecycle). In this project, the blueprint approach, initially developed in the FP7 project IMAGINE, was extended to cover the needs of customized product-service systems by including IoT sensors and smart devices and putting those technologies to use on the manufacturing floor, collecting data to drive predictive analytics. In addition, ServTech developed a novel Product-oriented Configuration Language (PoCL) for customizing digital products. This is a user-centric language that provides 3D CAD/CAM interactive abilities to help customers collaborate with product designers and engineers exploring digital product and service configurations.

7th Framework Programme

ServTech participated in the EU Framework 7 Integrated Project IMAGINE (Innovative End-to-end Management of Dynamic Manufacturing Networks). as scientific coordinator. In this project, ServTech designed a federated IT platform supporting the Industry 4.0 shift from linear, sequential supply chain operations to an interconnected, open system of supply operations – known as a smart manufacturing network. This lays the foundation for how manufacturers and suppliers can collaborate to produce a range of innovative digital products. In this project, ServTech also developed a framework comprising programmable abstract knowledge types that convey manufacturing knowledge – called manufacturing blueprint images (or simply blueprints). These turn conventional products into self-describing products by storing, linking, combining, and analyzing the raw data collected by a product throughout its lifecycle and the processes that produce it. Manufacturing blueprints rely on model-based design techniques to manage and inter-link product data and information (both its content and context), product portfolios and product families, manufacturing assets (personnel, plant machinery and facilities, production line equipment), and, in general, help meet the requirements (functional, performance, quality, cost, time, etc.) of an entire manufacturing network. This information can be put within a broader operational context, providing the basis for manufacturing actionable “intelligence” and a move toward more fact-based decisions. In this way, “smart actionable data” is created from which knowledge can be generated and production processes can be triggered.