Accelerating the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in manufacturing, strengthening the competitiveness of Europe's industrial system, and fostering new forms of collaboration between industry, research, and institutions were the key themes of "RETHINKING MANUFACTURING – Forging the European AI Ecosystem for Manufacturing-X", jointly organised by Assolombarda and Politecnico di Milano.
During the event, euroFMX (European TrUstworthy GeneRative AI & Autonomisation Frontier Models for Manufacturing-X Competitiveness) was presented. Coordinated by Prof. Andrea Matta, euroFMX is one of Europe's flagship initiatives in industrial Artificial Intelligence. Funded by Horizon Europe with a budget of €45 million, the project brings together 72 partners from 20 European countries.
The involvement of three departments highlights Politecnico di Milano’s interdisciplinary leadership in the project, combining expertise in advanced Artificial Intelligence, manufacturing technologies, production systems, digital platforms, and industrial innovation ecosystems.
The project addresses the most pressing challenges facing European manufacturing, including global competition, skills shortages, supply chain resilience, and increasing regulatory requirements. Its ambition is to build the first European ecosystem dedicated to the development and deployment of Generative AI and Agentic AI for manufacturing, promoting trustworthy, interoperable, human-centric AI systems while strengthening Europe's technological sovereignty.
The initiative is built around four strategic pillars: the development of autonomous and trustworthy industrial Artificial Intelligence systems; strengthening skills through training, co-creation, and knowledge-sharing activities; the development of European infrastructures dedicated to industrial data valorisation and digital sovereignty; and the design of advanced models of Generative AI for manufacturing applications.
The Department of Mechanical Engineering will develop new autonomous, graph-based Agentic AI solutions for the planning and control of production systems, together with physics-informed models for advanced manufacturing processes, including laser technologies for electric mobility and Metal Additive Manufacturing based on novel in situ sensing systems.
The Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering will contribute to industrial autonomisation frameworks, Generative AI and agentic systems, digital manufacturing platforms, as well as impact assessment, ethics and ecosystem development.
The Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering will design the hierarchical Physics-Informed Graph Neural Network framework to model the factory across multiple levels, integrating Neural Architecture Search (NAS) techniques to automatically optimize model structure, along with graph-based GenAI solutions for coordinating industrial Agentic AI systems.
The technologies developed within euroFMX will be validated across several industrial domains, including advanced manufacturing, robotics, machining, electric mobility, circular economy, and human-AI collaboration, transforming research into tangible innovation for European manufacturing.
This article was first published on 10 July by Politecnico di Milano.
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