Date: 27-28 November 2008
Place: Italy
Topic: IMS DIFAC Steering Committee (and Technical) Meeting
In parallel with the next IMS Difac steering committee, which will make the point about the three regional projects and will establish the plan of actions for the next months, a technical meeting will be organised to discuss about the progress of the integration activities.

Date: 1-3 October 2008
Place: Switzerland
Topic: IMS DIFAC Global Meeting
This meeting took place in parallel with an IMS workshop; the DiFac EU coordinator presented the results of the three regional projects during the IMS International Steering Committee meeting. The status of the three regional projects (Korea, Europe, and Switzerland), important decisions ha also been made concerning the integration of the various projects’ results will be discussed and the integration. Among other concerning dissemination an agreement among the partners for preparing a book about the Digital factory has been reached and a first tentative structure of the book has been proposed. The dissemination activities of the DiFac EU project till its end have been presented, the coordinator of the European projects invited the partners of the Swiss and Korean regional projects to actively participate to these events (scientific articles and presentations, contribution to the next newsletter issues, etc.).

Date: 3 September 2008
Place: Switzerland
Topic: DIFAC CH Meeting
In this plenary meeting, to which participated all the DiFac CH partners, the results of the various work-packages have been presented. The action plan for the next months has also been discussed as well as the wishes and the tasks of the DiFac CH concerning the IMS meeting in October 2008. Mr. Michael Burnoz working in the Economic Faculty of the University of Lausanne (HEC-UNIL) was also invited to briefly present the characteristic of the software MPX and its current utilization at HEC-UNIL; this is done because the utilization of this tool is currently under investigation in the framework of DiFac CH WP2.

Date: 3 September 2008
Place: Switzerland
Topic: WP3 RFID – Company visit for definition prototype characteristics
The various DiFac CH partners involved in the WP3 visited a company (customer of Sage-Proconcept) where the prototype will be installed. The commitment of this company, not officially belonging to the list of DiFac CH project will allow to test the ERP-RFID interface in a more realistic and challenging environment. On the basis of a preliminary analysis of the company, a luxury jeweller with an international sales network, a first draft of its requirements and thus of the prototype objectives and features has been established.

Date: 10 June 2008
Place: Prima Industrie (Turin)
Topic: IMS DIFAC EUROPE - User Group Validation Meeting
Some DIFAC CH members participated, as members of the validation user group, to the demonstration of the deliverables of the European project:
• An Augmented reality environment for machinery remote maintenance
• A Virtual Reality environment for training in emergency moments
• The iPortal: the entrance point for identifying and solving your company troubles
• A virtual shop for co-design and remote product selection
• An innovative instrument for factory design and simulation
This meeting gives the opportunity to further discuss about the project results integration between the Swiss and the European DiFac project.

Date: 6 June 2008
Topic: 3rd issue of the IMS DIFAC EUROPE Newsletter
(available at www.difac.net at the page Downloads)
In what concern the DIFAC CH project this issue contains the description of the R&D partners involved and that of the ERP-RFID prototype under development. Interesting information about the deliverables and the partners of the European and Korean IMS DIFAC projects can also be found in this issue.

Date: 8-9 May 2008
Place: Korea
Topic: IMS DIFAC Global Meeting
The status of the three regional projects (Korea, Europe, and Switzerland) was discussed and the integration and dissemination of the various project results was planned.

Date: 26 March 2008 at 10h00
Place: SUPSI Department of Technologies and Innovation
Topic: WP3 RFID-ERP integration analysis and prototype testing
The analysis of the detailed requirements of SAGE-Proconcept and of its customers about the RFID-ERP integration prototype was presented and discussed during this meeting in order to shape the prototype specifications.
The results of the RFID state of the art in manufacturing was presented in order to support the definition of the RFID-ERP business strategy to be developed in the following months.

Date: 3 March 2008 at 10h00
Place: SUPSI ICIMSI
Topic: WP1
A meeting has been carried out in SUPSI and CEMEX to define the next steps for WP1. Key next steps are the definition of the SMARTBRICKS requirements and the development of the system contents. A roadmap was presented by CEMEX to initiate the Semantic Web. 

Date: 22 February 2008 at 10h00
Place: SUPSI ICIMSI
Topic: WP2 Simulation
A meeting has been carried out in SUPSI with EPFLs team to define the next steps for WP2, before the planned start of the WP2 (month 6) an exploratory study will be conducted to identify the data to be exchanged between ERP systems and job shop and to design the interface among them.

Date: 15 January 2008 at 10h00
Place: ProConcept
Topic: WP3 RFID-ERP integration meeting
Proconcept met SUPSI DIFAC's team where the technical aspects as well as the supply chain potential applications of RFID were presented. At the same time, a demonstration of RFID tags and readers performances was carried out on site. On the basis of these presentations, SAGE-Proconcept expertise in barcode application, on the firm's strategic objectives concerning RFID and its potential consumers an initial activity plan for the next months was proposed and agreed.  

Date: 23 November 2007
Place:University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI)
Topic: The Swiss IMS DIFAC kick off took
The Swiss DIFAC partners got together to present and discuss the key research objectives and define the next key activities for 2008. Another important aspect was the identification of collaboration opportunities and interfaces with the European and Korean DIFAC IMS partners. Dr. Claudia Radaelli from ITIA, represented the European DIFAC project explaining the project progress.

Date: 19 July 2007
Place: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne EPFL
Topic: DIFAC Global IMS meeting
On July 19th and 20th 2007, the global IMS DIFAC meeting took. More than 25 partners from academia and industry from Korea, Italy and Switzerland attended the meeting.