In order to provide higher assurance and efficiency in quality control, ‘Impulse Project 1’ aims to generate and continuously maintain a model of a product and production processes from e.g. sensor data or resources information, the so-called ‘virtual image’. On the basis of this model, real time information of properties and product quality can be derived without time-consuming testing or the need for expensive equipment (e.g. sensors). Hence, quality control does not longer rely on control samples after the production of a product, but rather a real time analysis during the production process. This constant provision of virtual images of physical objects represents the core idea of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), which is consistently applied in the food industry.

With the achievement of this goal, the project sets far-reaching ‘Impulses’ by initiating a disruptive change in the quality assurance in the food industry from only random sampling and retrospective quality philosophy towards a continuous (prospective) monitoring.