Paper Sessions

Workshop Sessions

Interoperable Manufacturing-as-a-Service Ecosystems: AI Agents, Cloud Marketplaces, and Data Spaces for Agile and Trustworthy Manufacturing Collaboration

This workshop explores how interoperable architectures, explainable and generative AI, and multi-agent systems can unlock Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) at scale. Building on MaaSAI's vision—an ecosystem where autonomous provider/consumer agents negotiate capacity, a cloud marketplace orchestrates services, and a dynamic semantic catalogue enables discovery—we will convene researchers, integrators, standards bodies and industrial users to co-design the next wave of interoperable MaaS infrastructures. Participants will examine reference models that connect enterprise systems with edge/IoT assets; experiment with patterns for secure point-to-point messaging and sovereign data exchange; and debate how xAI-enabled recommenders and scheduling engines can be audited, trusted and certified across supply networks. The workshop is hands-on and outcome-oriented: attendees will work through live templates (ontology stubs, capability maps, KPI scorecards) and take away implementation checklists that can be applied to pilots and products. The program directly addresses I-ESA themes such as AI model interoperability and integration with IoT/edge computing, ensuring strong topical fit with the 2026 edition.

Core topics include: (i) interoperable MaaS marketplaces and service life-cycles; (ii) provider/consumer agents for automated negotiation and planning (xAI + GenAI); (iii) semantic interoperability—MaaS ontologies, dynamic catalogues, and searchability across sectors; (iv) secure, sovereign data exchange and P2P messaging; (v) edge-cloud orchestration for real-time shop-floor feedback and dynamic rescheduling; (vi) benchmarking methods and KPIs for flexibility, lead time, resource use and trust/compliance; (vii) industrial showcases from MaaSAI pilots and DIH ecosystems. Outcomes will feed a public post-workshop report capturing consensus design patterns and open research challenges.

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Supply Chain Resilience in Manufacturing-As-A-Service (MaaS): Smart Manufacturing Networks (SMNs) to Support the Industrial Resilience

This workshop will focus on technologies, innovative solutions, and research addressing supply chain resilience and Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS). The emphasis is on the dynamic adaptation of supply chain interactions and production processes in response to unexpected events that disrupt normal manufacturing operations.

Disruptions may stem from major crises such as pandemics, natural disasters, or geopolitical conflicts, but also from localized issues such as supply delays, machine breakdowns, or other complications that critically impact production continuity.

These challenges highlight the need for supply chains that are more agile, resilient, and adaptive. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies and innovative strategies enables organizations to respond effectively to disruptions, fostering robust and dynamic supply networks

The workshop will particularly address Smart Manufacturing Networks (SMNs) - connected, coordinated industrial ecosystems that integrate programmable MaaS capabilities. SMNs provide enhanced visibility and control, allowing production networks to proactively manage disruptions and sustain operations efficiently.

Through the discussion of innovative strategies and practical industrial cases, this workshop will illustrate the transformative role of SMNs in building resilient supply chains.

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Data Spaces for Circular Manufacturing: challenges and solutions - From Data Interoperability to Data Sovereignty for a twin transition of Manufacturing Industry

Data Economy and Circular Economy are two of the major innovation trends in these recent years, providing an original interpretation of the so called twin transition of the European Manufacturing Industry. On the one side Data Economy aims at the valorisation (and in certain cases also monetisation) of the Data produced along a manufacturing value chain, paving the way towards cross-company collaboration and interoperability and enabling advanced AI applications. On the other side Circular Economy aims at the sustainability of the Manufacturing industries, through the implementation of 9R virtuous circles such as for instance Re-use, Re-pair, Re-furbish, Re-manufacturing, Re-cycling. The Workshop aims at discussing how recent technology developments such as Data Spaces and Digital Product Passports can create the infrastructure where Data and Circular Economy could symbiotically flourish and provide competitive advantage for European Manufacturing Industries, and SMEs in particular.

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Circular Economy ecosystems Redesigning Skills (CERES) - Valorizing innovating ideas: winning proposals from CERES Hackathons

This workshop aims to showcase the outcomes of a unique international hackathon journey on Circular Economy and sustainable industrial transformation. Conducted across Bulgaria, Denmark, Cyprus, and Italy between December 2025 and February 2026, the hackathon series brings together students, professionals, and companies to collaboratively design practical solutions for real industrial challenges. The workshop will share experiences, methodologies, and key insights from this cross-border initiative, inspiring future collaborations between education, research, and industry.

Goals of the workshop:

  • To present the structure, process, and results of the Circular Innovation Hackathons organized in four European countries.
  • To highlight the impact of cross-sector collaboration in addressing challenges related to Circular Economy.
  • To discuss lessons learned, innovative solutions developed, and the potential for scaling these initiatives within education and industry.
  • To engage participants in an interactive exchange of ideas, fostering new partnerships for future Erasmus+ and sustainability-driven projects.

The workshop will guide participants through the four-part hackathon journey, illustrating how interdisciplinary teams tackled real-world sustainability challenges provided by companies. The session will include:

  • Designing the Hackathon: Identifying topics and business challenges, engaging students and workers, and building sponsorships and incentives (study, research, and work opportunities).
  • Collaboration in Action: How higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET) participants co-created innovative and circular solutions.
  • Industry Engagement: The role of companies as challenge providers, mentors, and sponsors, fostering knowledge exchange and innovation.
  • Results and Impact: Presentation of the most promising solutions addressing climate change, circular economy transition, and the European Green Deal objectives.
  • Interactive Discussion: An open dialogue with participants to explore how hackathons can serve as catalysts for sustainable transformation and experiential learning across borders.

Through this workshop, attendees will gain inspiration and practical insights into how hackathon-based collaboration can drive systemic change towards a circular and resilient European industry.

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Enabling Automated Model Generation with agentic AI through interoperability frameworks: Exploring Opportunities and Challenges from Business Process to Simulation Models

The recent emergence of agentic AI, autonomous, reasoning, and tool-using AI systems is reshaping how models of industrial systems are created, maintained, and utilized. Instead of static or rule-based automation, agentic AI enables dynamic, context-aware generation and adaptation of business process and simulation models.

In industrial practice, however, this potential can only be realized if such AI agents can interoperate effectively across data silos, tools, and digital representations of assets. The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) provides a standardized interoperability framework that allows AI systems to access structured, semantically rich, and machine-interpretable information about assets, processes, and their relationships.

This workshop explores how agentic AI can leverage AAS-based interoperability to automatically generate, refine, and manage business process and simulation models within production and manufacturing environments. Participants will engage with hands-on examples, discuss conceptual and technological challenges, and outline a joint vision for integrating AAS-driven interoperability with next-generation AI modelling agents.

Goals:

  • Understand the principles and architecture of agentic AI for automated model generation in industrial contexts
  • Explore how interoperability frameworks such as the AAS enable AI agents to discover, interpret, and integrate asset and process data
  • Demonstrate how agentic AI can automatically construct or update business process and simulation models from AAS-based information
  • Identify limitations and research challenges regarding semantics, industrial application, scalability, validation and human trust of the model creation

Content and Topics Covered:

  • Introduction to agentic AI and its relevance for automated model generation
  • The Asset Administration Shell as an interoperability foundation for AI agents
  • Architectures for AAS-integrated AI agents (e.g., autonomous reasoning over asset data, workflow orchestration)
  • Hands-on example: generating or updating BPMN or simulation models from AAS data
  • Discussion of technical and ethical challenges: data trust, transparency, explainability, and human oversight in AI-generated models
  • Outlook: convergence of AAS, digital twins, and agentic AI for self-configuring and self-optimizing manufacturing systems
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Integrating Circularity, Digitalisation, and Low-Emission Technologies for Industrial Decarbonisation: Synergies for decarbonising energy-intensive manufacturing

This workshop brings together the HIYIELD, MEDALS, and CITADEL EU research projects communities to explore the convergence of circular economy strategies, digital transformation, and low-emission process innovation as enablers of deep decarbonisation across European energy-intensive industries (EIIs) such as steelmaking, glass production, refractory brick manufacturing, copper wire production, and concrete recycling.

As Europe advances toward climate neutrality, reducing process-related emissions while maintaining material quality and industrial competitiveness requires systemic, cross-sectoral collaboration that bridges material circularity, digital intelligence, and energy transition. European EIIs play a vital role in the continent's economy but are also responsible for a substantial share of greenhouse gas emissions. Their decarbonisation is central to achieving the goals of the European Green Deal, the Net-Zero Industry Act, and the Industrial Emissions Directive.

The projects involved in this workshop contribute complementary solutions that address different facets of this transformation. HIYIELD focuses on maximizing scrap quality and yield in steel recycling through advanced mechanical sorting and sensor-based characterization. MEDALS tackles the challenge of tramp element accumulation—notably copper and tin—which impairs steel recyclability and product performance, developing innovative pyrometallurgical treatments and data-driven control approaches for impurity management. CITADEL, in turn, expands the scope of innovation beyond steelmaking by developing and validating novel electric-based heating and technologies, including hybrid electric/gas systems, and plasma-assisted heating.

By combining these complementary research trajectories, the workshop will address the need for integrated pathways to industrial decarbonisation, where technological innovation, data connectivity, and circular resource management reinforce each other. Key discussion areas will include scrap valorisation and impurity removal, advanced heating technologies for emission abatement, and the role of digital tools—such as deep learning, big data analytics, and process simulation—in enabling real-time optimization and cross-sectoral knowledge transfer. The workshop will also emphasize the importance of systemic coordination across the value chain, encompassing product design, collection and sorting, material recovery, and thermal processing, supported by robust digital infrastructures and life cycle assessment methodologies.

Ultimately, this event aims to create a shared vision for the next generation of sustainable industrial systems—ones that are circular, digitally enabled, and low in emissions. By fostering collaboration among research projects, technology providers, policymakers, and industrial stakeholders, the workshop will support the identification of common challenges, standardization needs, and innovation roadmaps that accelerate the deployment of scalable decarbonisation solutions across European manufacturing. The integrated perspective promoted by HIYIELD, MEDALS, and CITADEL demonstrates that achieving climate neutrality in energy-intensive industries requires more than isolated technical progress: it demands the convergence of material circularity, energy system decarbonisation, and digital intelligence into a unified, resilient industrial ecosystem.

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Mission Ready Interoperability: Light weight and Flexible Interoperability Architectures, Approaches and Applications for Highly Challenging Environments

This workshop focuses on interoperability in environments where conditions are volatile, resources are constrained and failure is not an option. Examples include disaster response, civil security, critical infrastructures, remote operations and other highly challenging contexts.

The goals are to

  • share architectures and solution patterns that are “mission ready”, not only theoretically elegant
  • highlight light weight and flexible approaches that work with heterogeneous legacy systems and unstable networks
  • connect researchers, practitioners and developers across domains that face similar interoperability challenges

Topics include, among others

  • reference architectures and system of systems approaches
  • governance and data sharing models, including data spaces
  • semantic and process interoperability
  • hybrid cloud edge and resilient communication solutions
  • human factors, usability and lessons learned from deployments or exercises
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Toward Trusted, Interoperable and AI-Enabled Enterprise Knowledge Services: AI-Driven Knowledge Formalisation, Ontology Engineering and Human-in-the-Loop LLMs for Enterprise Interoperability

The transition toward AI-enabled enterprise interoperability requires new methods for capturing, structuring and operationalising industrial knowledge so that it can be understood, validated and exploited by both humans and intelligent systems. Today, manufacturing ecosystems still struggle with fragmented semantics, insufficient formalisation of expert knowledge, and the difficulty of transforming complex information into actionable, interoperable assets across organisations.

This workshop explores an integrated, AI-driven approach to enterprise interoperability that spans the entire knowledge lifecycle, building on insights and developments from the MEDUSA, UniMaaS and RemaNet projects.

It begins with the elicitation and formalisation of domain expertise, transforming tacit manufacturing know-how into structured representations grounded in real industrial practices. Building on this foundation, ontology engineering research provides shared semantic models capable of aligning heterogeneous organisational processes, platforms and enterprise systems. Finally, recent advances in large language models create new human-in-the-loop interfaces to Knowledge Graphs, enabling semantic retrieval, guided navigation, automated detection of inconsistencies and gaps, and an overall more accessible interaction with complex enterprise knowledge sources.

By connecting these layers, the workshop highlights how AI can foster enterprise interoperability by bridging human expertise, formal semantic assets and intelligent knowledge-centric services. This perspective also emphasises the growing role of LLM-supported auditing and curation workflows, which are essential for developing trustworthy, consistent and evolvable interoperability resources

In addition to the technical discussion, the workshop will examine the market and adoption challenges associated with knowledge-centric interoperability solutions. Through interactive dialogue with participants, who may also set up demo session, the workshop will identify open research questions, barriers to deployment and opportunities for future development, ultimately contributing to a clearer roadmap for AI-enabled, trustworthy and sustainable enterprise interoperability.

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