A fine example of fruitful collaboration between industry and academia, the ADRIC (Automatic Defect Recognition in Industrial control) project has benefited all partners.
Here's an overview of the successes that have resulted from this initiative!
The Walloon Region has invested nearly €2 million in this project, and the results speak for themselves. The partners' combined sales have already reached €11 million for products developed as part of the project. This success has enabled X-RIS, Euresys and Optrion to see significant growth in their turnover, with increases of 75%, 120% and 50% respectively over the four years of the project.
- Ecosystem
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- Industry 5.0
- Success criteria
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- Production or business model transformation
- Sales revenue inscrease
- Job creation
- Long-term innovation
- Disruptive innovation
The local dimension of this success is underlined by the job creations and structural developments within the industrial partners. X-RIS and Euresys have considerably expanded their manpower, from 13 to 21 and from 45 to 60 people respectively. We should also note the change of ownership at X-RIS with a management buyout (MBO), which means that 95% of employees are now shareholders, a move hailed as a positive development.
In terms of research, the ADRIC project has generated 11 scientific publications and 2 doctoral theses, demonstrating the significant impact it has had at academic level.
ADRIC - what is it?
The aim of this project was to use artificial intelligence to automatically detect defects in parts during quality control in the industrial process. These quality controls are carried out using radiography (X-RIS), industrial vision (Euresys) or shearography (Optrion). Image analysis by an AI system automatically and reliably detects classic defects, which account for almost 90% of cases. This aid saves the operator a considerable amount of time on all the detection tasks, enabling him/her to concentrate on the parts that require more detailed analysis.
For the products developed as part of the ADRIC project, the market is essentially international. The partners have succeeded in creating products that can be marketed internationally, with a customer base that extends to Asia for Euresys and to international aerospace companies for X-RIS.
"What makes these products special is their user-friendly approach," explains Christophe Greffe, CEO of X-RIS. "The user needs to be helped in his work. Thanks to this tool, we are able to really stand out from our competitors in the niche market of industrial vision.
The ADRIC (Automatic Defect Recognition in Industrial Control) project came to an end in 2022, after 4 years of fruitful development for all the partners: X-RIS, Euresys and Optrion on the industrial side; and UCL's IPSGroup and SystMod on the academic side.
The MecaTech Cluster : Your innovation buddy
The ADRIC project was launched as part of the 2019 Marshall Plan call for projects. The partners, X-RIS, Euresys and Optrion on the industrial side, and the IPSGroup from UCL and SystMod from ULG for the scientific contribution, submitted the project via the Mecatech cluster. The Mecatech cluster provided the financial support and appropriate expertise to enable the partnership to give shape to this innovation project, which has been a real success for all parties involved!
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