Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MIND4MACHINES (MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY’S NOVEL DIGITALISATION VALUE CHAINS FOR CONNECTING MACHINES WITH PEOPLE, PROCESS AND TECHNOLOGY)
Período documentado: 2021-06-14 hasta 2023-04-13
MIND4MACHINES aims to facilitate cross-border and cross-sectoral collaboration and to provide direct support for entrepreneurship and innovation in “smart ICT technologies for manufacturing industry”, particularly covering the entire digitalisation value chain, from IoT (hardware, software, services and connectivity) to Big Data, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and Cybersecurity technologies Thus, the project aims to create accelerate the market up-take of solutions for deep transformation of energy/resource intensive industries into sustainable, climate neutral and intelligent manufacturing, within the context of the European Green Deal.
MIND4MACHINES targets to support SMEs in the digitalisation value chain via:
- Direct financial support through open calls to facilitate that SMEs – or groups SMEs and other stakeholders – develop, test and fine-tune solutions to bring successful innovations to the market, boosting the generation of new industrial value chains. The innovations tested, supported and scaled up within these open calls will be selected according to criteria based on the MIND4MACHINES Joint Strategic Agenda, a co-created guiding document establishing the main challenges and goals in the selected regions towards the transformation of manufacturing industries into digital, sustainable ones. This will ensure that the funded projects jointly contribute to the large-scale demonstrator objective, validating and scaling up new cross-sectoral and cross-regional value chains.
- Accelerator programmes to increase the capacity of SMEs in digitalisation value chain for scale-up and reach new financial resources by means of investment, funding and new clients. This is why project partners will invest their resources into a series of activities (bootcamps, mentorship, e-learning, etc.) to train technology provider SMEs to detect, engage and obtain successfully the financial sources they need, and to exploit the results of the projects to a wider audience, which could benefit from the technology as potential customers or partners. This work line, complementary to direct financial support, will multiply the chances of success of the companies.
Engaging clusters as key actors to foster cross-sectoral and cross-border new value chains. Clusters are regional innovation ecosystems with a great potential for the replication of new digitalisation solutions funded by MIND4MACHINES, reason why the project partners (already clusters and industry associations) will engage and evangelize other regional clusters to maximise the project’s impacts in Europe through dissemination activities.
MIND4MACHINES targets to support SMEs in the digitalisation value chain via:
- Direct financial support through open calls to facilitate that SMEs – or groups SMEs and other stakeholders – develop, test and fine-tune solutions to bring successful innovations to the market, boosting the generation of new industrial value chains. The innovations tested, supported and scaled up within these open calls will be selected according to criteria based on the MIND4MACHINES Joint Strategic Agenda, a co-created guiding document establishing the main challenges and goals in the selected regions towards the transformation of manufacturing industries into digital, sustainable ones. This will ensure that the funded projects jointly contribute to the large-scale demonstrator objective, validating and scaling up new cross-sectoral and cross-regional value chains.
- Accelerator programmes to increase the capacity of SMEs in digitalisation value chain for scale-up and reach new financial resources by means of investment, funding and new clients. This is why project partners will invest their resources into a series of activities (bootcamps, mentorship, e-learning, etc.) to train technology provider SMEs to detect, engage and obtain successfully the financial sources they need, and to exploit the results of the projects to a wider audience, which could benefit from the technology as potential customers or partners. This work line, complementary to direct financial support, will multiply the chances of success of the companies.
Engaging clusters as key actors to foster cross-sectoral and cross-border new value chains. Clusters are regional innovation ecosystems with a great potential for the replication of new digitalisation solutions funded by MIND4MACHINES, reason why the project partners (already clusters and industry associations) will engage and evangelize other regional clusters to maximise the project’s impacts in Europe through dissemination activities.
During the period from M1 to M22 reported, in order to shape the Open Call to be launched tasks under the work package “MIND4MACHINES framework development and mapping and analysis exercise” are completed. After desk research on the usage of ICT, IoT and Industry 4.0 technologies and good practices in the manufacturing sector, a need analysis is made regionally by project partners as well as Europewide to understand the needs of the manufacturing sector. Then 8 regional and one European co-creation workshops were organised to expand the views of stakeholders regarding digitalisation technologies for the manufacturing industry. All the information gathered is merged into the Joint Strategic Agenda, which would be the base for the MIND4MACHINES Open Calls. In parallel, the MIND4MACHINES Consortium made a mapping on the additional funding and investment opportunities for the same target group, namely technology provider SMEs and startups for digitalisation of the manufacturing sector as well as manufacturing companies.
The Open Call 1 is opened on 27 April 2022 and closed on 29 June 2022, 21 subprojects are funded under MIND4MACHINES, 18 projects under the innovation support scheme, 3 under the go-to-market scheme. The funded projects have 52 partners in total, 41 SMEs and 11 large industrial companies, among which 29 SMEs act as technology providers, while 23 companies act as industrial partners.
The Accelerator Programme was co-created by the contribution of all project partners according to the findings of the Joint Strategic Agenda and the first round of the Accelerator Programme was launched with a Bootcamp event on 19th of November 2022. The Accelerator Programme included live and recorded webinars for MIND4MACHINES Open Call-1 winners and other interested SMEs. It offered 1:1 coaching sessions only for OC-1 winner SMEs. The condition to participate in the Accelerator Programme was to assess investment readiness level with the IRL self-assessment tool, based on the methodology developed under a previous project by partner bwcon, which was digitalised in f6s platform and reached from the project website.
In order to provide a platform for technology providers and manufacturing companies a Virtual Meeting Point was set up by using the f6s platform, which was launched in the MIND4MACHINES website in the dedicated section. MIND4MACHINES partners organised or participated in a total of 28 events to disseminate the Open Calls in their region. Collaboration with Enterprise Europe Network was built since also three of the partners are also acting as EEN nodes and relevant b2b events were selected as matching opportunities to find partners for Open Calls.
At the beginning of the project, the Dissemination and Communication Strategy was developed, the project website and social media accounts were set, and dissemination and communications activities are running. Collaborations with different Clusters as well as EEN nodes have been held and Open Calls and IRL tool were disseminated among such a wide audience.
From the start of the project, which was during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Consortium partners met regularly online for Consortium and Executive Board meetings as well as dedicated meetings for different work packages. The MIND4MACHINES partners met two times in this period face-to-face, first in Stuttgart between 8-10 June 2022 hosted by partner bwcon, then in Turin between 23-25 November 2022 hosted by partner MESAP. Regular meetings and correspondence were held by the coordinator ICI with the Project Advisor and EISMEA.
The Open Call 1 is opened on 27 April 2022 and closed on 29 June 2022, 21 subprojects are funded under MIND4MACHINES, 18 projects under the innovation support scheme, 3 under the go-to-market scheme. The funded projects have 52 partners in total, 41 SMEs and 11 large industrial companies, among which 29 SMEs act as technology providers, while 23 companies act as industrial partners.
The Accelerator Programme was co-created by the contribution of all project partners according to the findings of the Joint Strategic Agenda and the first round of the Accelerator Programme was launched with a Bootcamp event on 19th of November 2022. The Accelerator Programme included live and recorded webinars for MIND4MACHINES Open Call-1 winners and other interested SMEs. It offered 1:1 coaching sessions only for OC-1 winner SMEs. The condition to participate in the Accelerator Programme was to assess investment readiness level with the IRL self-assessment tool, based on the methodology developed under a previous project by partner bwcon, which was digitalised in f6s platform and reached from the project website.
In order to provide a platform for technology providers and manufacturing companies a Virtual Meeting Point was set up by using the f6s platform, which was launched in the MIND4MACHINES website in the dedicated section. MIND4MACHINES partners organised or participated in a total of 28 events to disseminate the Open Calls in their region. Collaboration with Enterprise Europe Network was built since also three of the partners are also acting as EEN nodes and relevant b2b events were selected as matching opportunities to find partners for Open Calls.
At the beginning of the project, the Dissemination and Communication Strategy was developed, the project website and social media accounts were set, and dissemination and communications activities are running. Collaborations with different Clusters as well as EEN nodes have been held and Open Calls and IRL tool were disseminated among such a wide audience.
From the start of the project, which was during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Consortium partners met regularly online for Consortium and Executive Board meetings as well as dedicated meetings for different work packages. The MIND4MACHINES partners met two times in this period face-to-face, first in Stuttgart between 8-10 June 2022 hosted by partner bwcon, then in Turin between 23-25 November 2022 hosted by partner MESAP. Regular meetings and correspondence were held by the coordinator ICI with the Project Advisor and EISMEA.
In the next period, namely until the closure of the MIND4MACHINES project, sub-projects funded by MIND4MACHINES under Open Call-1 will be finalised, the first round of the Accelerator Programme will be completed, the Open-Call-2 projects will be awarded and finalised, the second round of the Accelerator Programme will be completed.
Under Open Call-1 21 projects, with in total 52 partners from 14 regions across Europe are funded, a similar number of projects are expected to be funded under Open Call-2.
MIND4MACHINES aims to exploit the results of these projects to wider audiences via MIND4MACHINES social media, newsletters, and videos of each sub-project will be produced and disseminated via MIND4MACHINES channels as well as partners’ channels if applicable. Also, the sub beneficiaries will be able to use the videos for the dissemination of their results. Additionally, as a part of the Accelerator Programme, MIND4MACHINES plans to organise and/ or participate in bigger events exploit the sub-projects’ results.
Under Open Call-1 21 projects, with in total 52 partners from 14 regions across Europe are funded, a similar number of projects are expected to be funded under Open Call-2.
MIND4MACHINES aims to exploit the results of these projects to wider audiences via MIND4MACHINES social media, newsletters, and videos of each sub-project will be produced and disseminated via MIND4MACHINES channels as well as partners’ channels if applicable. Also, the sub beneficiaries will be able to use the videos for the dissemination of their results. Additionally, as a part of the Accelerator Programme, MIND4MACHINES plans to organise and/ or participate in bigger events exploit the sub-projects’ results.