Date: 19-20 September 2024
Location: Thessaloniki, Greece

The European Union-funded project Circular Manufacturing 5.0 (CIRCMAN5.0) officially launched on 1st September 2024, embarking on a mission to transform the PV manufacturing sector through circularity principles aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, virgin resource consumption, solid waste, and water pollution. Supported by the Horizon Europe research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No 101178331, CIRCMAN5.0 will run for three years, bringing together a dynamic consortium of 19 partners across Europe, including top research institutions, industry leaders, and specialized SMEs.

We are happy about the successful kick-off meeting, held on 19-20 September 2024 in Thessaloniki, Greece, which gathered all partners to outline objectives, define roles, and set the project’s anticipated impact towards developing a Human-Centred AI-aided Digital Framework specifically for the PV manufacturing industry. This framework will help value chain stakeholders to:

1. Increase product circularity,
2. Reduce environmental impact,
3. Minimize material waste in products and manufacturing processes, and
4. Optimize overall manufacturing circularity.

Aligned with the EU’s guidelines on sustainable production, CIRCMAN5.0 emphasizes a strategic approach to circularity at each stage of the product lifecycle, with key objectives focusing on:

1. AI-driven Modelling and Simulation Parametric Techniques for product design
2. Machine Learning-Assisted Algorithms for dynamic production reconfiguration
3. Cognitive Digital Twin Simulation Environment for optimized manufacturing processes
4. Circularity and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Framework
5. Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) Recommendation Engine
6. Digital Product/Material Passport (DPP), enabled by Distributed Ledger Technologies

With the achievement of above objectives, CIRCMAN5.0’s outcomes are expected to significantly enhance waste reduction, transparency, and material validation while reducing energy consumption and boosting productivity within the manufacturing sector. The CIRCMAN5.0 consortium, supported by Horizon Europe, draws from Europe’s leading expertise to address pressing environmental challenges while fostering economic and sustainable growth.

We are happy about participating with the Green Deal Dataspace in this innovative research project! The Green Deal Dataspace can contribute its virtual data infrastructure for sovereign data sharing connecting peer-to-peer data end-points. It enables different services in the framework of sustainability and circular economy, like CO² tracking, supply chain resilience etc.

Additionally GDDS will contribute to any communication and dissemination task, community building, demonstration and exploitation and the co-design of green-deal services which demand sovereign data sharing.

For more information, please visit the project website and/or contact the project coordinator: