On April 1, 2020, the starting signal was given for the R&D project "Administrative shell for energy flexible factory operation (VerEFab)", which is publicly funded by the BMBF.

Together with the project partners Fraunhofer IGCV (Augsburg), MicroStep Europa GmbH, OSCAR PLT GmbH and TEKA Absaug- und Entsorgungstechnologie GmbH, the associated partners KTS GmbH & Co. KG and stürmsfs ag as well as the Industry Business Network 4.0 association, EDC will network machines at factory level to higher levels such as Industry 4.0 Platforms/ IIoT by means of application-specific machine adapters in the project. The aim is to enable a factory equipped in this way to react efficiently to fluctuations in the energy market (price and supply) in the future, e.g. due to the increasingly decentralized power grid, and to achieve an optimal relationship between energy production and consumption. 

The technology is based on the preliminary work of the open platform BaSys 4.0. The results will be tested and presented on demonstrators in a real environment. The project is scheduled for two years with a total financing volume of € 1.5 million.