Optician 2020 demonstration activities carried out to assess the benefits of the new mini-factories based business model for the production and delivery of personalised spectacles have successfully finished this July.

The Optician 2020 novel paradigm has been demonstrated by means of two mini-factory networks close to the sell point, i.e. the optician. A first mini-factory cluster was set up in Southern Europe, with an optician in Portugal. Once this cluster was operating, a second Central-European cluster, with an optician in Switzerland, was added, demonstrating the potential for effective up-scaling the concept and the management platform performance for intelligent production planning and control.

The demonstrator in Southern Europe started in November 2015 whereas the demonstrator in Central Europe started a few months later, in February 2016. Since then, both demonstrators have been running until the end of July 2016.  During a period of 7 months, the 2 clusters have generated 455 personalised spectacles that have fitted 240 users from the optic shop in Portugal and 215 from the second optic shop in Switzerland.

During the demonstration, the on-demand production chain started and finished at the optician shop. Opticians selected proper volunteers amongst their customers. Personalisation design was enabled by the scanning of the face-head anatomy and by a co-design environment allowing the user to select frame and lens design, material and coatings from a large catalogue choice of spectacles, decoration and lenses. All this data was automatically processed and ingested to an ICT platform, in charge of the creation and management of manufacturing orders.

Partners in the Consortium are now collecting all obtained results and feedback to prepare two public reports, one summarizing the benefits for the industrial sector and one focusing on the benefits from the consumer’s point of view.