In Time delivery in non-hierarchical Manufacturing Networks of Machinery and Equipment Industry

Project Information

INTIME

Grant agreement ID: 229132

Project closed

Start date 1 September 2009

End date 30 November 2012

Funded under

• Specific Programme "Cooperation": Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Materials and new Production Technologies

Total cost € 4 564 479,00

EU contribution € 3 177 887,00

Coordinated by

RHEINISCH-WESTFAELISCHE TECHNISCHE HOCHSCHULE AACHEN
Germany

Final Report Summary - INTIME (In Time delivery in non-hierarchical Manufacturing Networks of Machinery and Equipment Industry)

Executive Summary:

inTime is a European Commission funded Specific Targeted Research Projects (STREP) within the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) that is pursuing research, technological development and implementation with the aim of improving the collaboration, coordination, and communication of the highly connected European machinery and equipment industry. The inTime project started on 1st September 2009 and ended on 30th November 2012.

The key objective of inTime is to improve delivery reliability in each customer-supplier relationship balancing production in the overall network. In order to address existing issues of communication, transparency, coordination and allocation, a framework for improving delivery reliability in non-hierarchical production networks of machinery and equipment industry is introduced which is based on the idea of a market-driven, non-centralized coordination mechanism. The framework is made operational by applying a control loop’s logic to a certain customer-supplier-relationship respectively a purchasing process in general. Communication is enabled by an IT-based B2B-platform named myOpenFactory.

External transparency is created by a supplier’s performance evaluation and internal transparency is facilitated by monetarily quantifying the value of an in time delivery. Both correspond to the control loop’s feedback path. A market price for delivery reliability will create transparency to all production network participants by necessarily making delivery reliability monetarily quantifiable. Therefore a price equivalent to delivery reliability has to be identified. Even though delivery reliability itself cannot be made tradable independently, the value of reliability can be set into comparison with incentives given in percentage to the price of the product ordered.

By applying this control loop to the non-hierarchical production network of the machinery and equipment industry, a pareto-efficient allocation is reached and the delivery reliability is being improved. Simultaneously, the pricing and coordination function enables higher network performance. Both, the negotiated delivery dates manifested by the delivery reliability incentive and consequently the higher delivery adherence will lead to new planning opportunities incorporated in advanced production planning functions enabling lower stocks as well as higher efficiency in assembly and maximizing the network’s overall performance.

During the project duration of inTime, a comprehensive framework and nine well identified products, able to help companies improving the delivery reliability in each customer-supplier relationship in non-hierarchical manufacturing networks have been produced.

A study on delivery reliability in European machinery and equipment industry has been conducted and published to get a deeper and validated understanding of reasons for bad delivery adherence. Additionally a (network-wide) Supplier Performance Dashboard enables direct comparison between suppliers’ based on historic performance visualization. The financial assessment is a completely new tool to estimate the internal impact of missing parts and delayed deliveries within the company. Using the suppliers’ performance assessment a derivation of measures in order to improve the procurement process is also possible. Furthermore a standardized multilateral EDI environment as well as a compliant EDI messaging and archiving system based on myOpenFactory and Fujitsu SecDocs has been developed. Finally, the learning game aims to support dissemination and teaching activities with a hand-on example of the benefits of the inTime overall approach.

Project Context and Objectives:

Non-hierarchical production networks are a common environment of today’s manufacturing companies. Each company is facing multiple and dynamic relationships within several networks. This complex situation causes permanent delivery delays. Delayed supplies lead to wasteful turbulences in the entire network and to expensive compensations. For the European manufacturing industry the loss of efficiency is estimated to be 1 billion Euros per year. Besides the costs the missing delivery reliability leads to poor customer satisfaction and increased lead times.

The key objective of inTime is to improve delivery reliability in each customer-supplier relationship balancing production in the overall network. In order to foster delivery reliability each supply has to be rewarded according to its delivery performance. Today only a minority of supplies is successfully secured by manual negotiated delivery penalties. Due to the high variation of supplies manual levelling of incentives is a time consuming process. Therefore a fair share of risk between customer and supplier is not transparent. inTime will reach transparency by developing a market-based negotiation mechanism rewarding delivery reliability at minimum transaction costs.

Key innovation of the project is to establish an electronic market for trading reliability incentives. The integration into the entire order process requires several novelties which have to be developed simultaneously:

- The negotiation mechanism supports a new kind of order prioritization. To realize this potential new planning and sequencing algorithms are needed.
- In order to gain transparency on the criticality of each supply, functions analysing the internal risk and related costs of the required parts have to be developed.
- In order to get an overview of the delivery reliability within the machinery and equipment industry, an automated supplier performance measurement system has to be developed
- Enabler for inTime is an automated order data communication. To avoid redundant developments inTime applies the existing communication platform myOpenFactory.

With the official project start in September 2009, the project beneficiaries met for a kick-off meeting in Aachen/ Germany on 9 September 2009. Dr. Volker Stich of FIR at RWTH Aachen University welcomed the beneficiaries and the EC project officer, Mr. Claude Rieg, and presented the motivation of forming the inTime project consortium as stated above. All beneficiaries agreed upon a common understanding of the timeframes and deadlines with September 2009 being month 1 of the inTime project and October 2012 being month 39 of the project. For a proper project execution, Mr. Philipp Attig outlined the inTime objectives and Mr. Thomas Jasinski presented all relevant organizational, legal and financial issues for the Coordinator. Mr. Claude Rieg presented the contract rights and obligations expected by the European Commission. As well, with the kick-off meeting the inTime work packages 1, 2, 5 and 7 started. The individual work package leaders introduced their understanding of the project as well as short agendas for the upcoming work to be done.

The main focus of the project’s first half consists of an analysis of requirements as well as a concept and design section. The main objective of the analysis of requirements section is firstly to attain a deep knowledge about the current practices in order fulfillment processes among the machine manufacturers and their suppliers in non-hierarchical production networks. Secondly, the definition of requirements is needed in order to develop an in time delivery environment, as fact, the main aim of the present proposal. The main target of the concept and design section is to establish the framework for a coordination mechanism for delivery reliability. It is being examined how additional incentives lead to a rising interest for an in time delivery and therefore to a non-centralized coordination of capacities and eliminate turbulences in highly dynamic production networks. Market mechanisms that are going to be analyzed in the section described before will be adjusted in order to facilitate both order synchronization and profit maximization for beneficiaries.

In order to address the challenges discussed above and answer the main research question, a framework is introduced which is based on the idea of a market-driven, non-centralized coordination mechanism. By enabling communication, setting up transparency, creating a market-driven coordination mechanism the framework can be seen as an enabling model for improving delivery reliability in non-hierarchical production networks of machinery and equipment industry. The framework is made operational by applying a control loop’s logic to a certain customer-supplier-relationship respectively a purchasing process in general. The main characteristic of a control loop is to subsequently track information or measures (of the control path), derive adjustments out of this quasi-historical data and thus ultimately improve the original state.

Here, a purchasing process represents the control path of the control loop and is to be improved. Communication, respectively the purchasing process, is enabled by an IT-based B2B-platform named myOpenFactory. Numerous bilateral transactions in a permanently changing production network entail an automated and standardized communication between customers and suppliers in order to enable cost-efficient, continuous and transparent information exchange.

External transparency is created by a supplier’s performance evaluation and internal transparency is facilitated by monetarily quantifying the value of an in time delivery. Both correspond to the control loop’s feedback path. A market price for delivery reliability will create transparency to all production network participants by necessarily making delivery reliability monetarily quantifiable. Therefore a price equivalent to delivery reliability has to be identified. Even though delivery reliability itself cannot be made tradable independently, the value of reliability can be set into comparison with incentives given in percentage to the price of the product ordered.

The evaluated supplier information and the knowledge about the value of an in time delivery forms the input variable for the control loop’s controller panel which fulfils the task of deriving adequate incentive measures improving a subsequent purchasing process. Thus a non-centralized coordination mechanism is created. Both, customer and supplier will make use of this price information for bilateral incentive negotiation. The incentive of delivery date adherence becomes the central coordination mechanism to ensure a better planning reliability for the customer.

By applying this control loop to the non-hierarchical production network of the machinery and equipment industry, a pareto-efficient allocation is reached and the delivery reliability is being improved. Simultaneously, the pricing and coordination function enables higher network performance. Both, the negotiated delivery dates manifested by the delivery reliability incentive and consequently the higher delivery adherence will lead to new planning opportunities incorporated in advanced production planning functions enabling lower stocks as well as higher efficiency in assembly and maximizing the network’s overall performance.

The second half of the project was mainly dedicated to the general concept design, software development and system implementation. Main focus was the conception and software implementation of the external transparency tool. Therefore, a first prototype has been created which allows the pilot companies to evaluate the performance of suppliers based on historical data. Making use of this assessment helps the companies to evaluate the eligibility of making use of especially positive financial incentives. The objective was to create an ERP-applicable platform which is permanently gathering order processing data, analyzing it and displaying it within a supply performance dashboard. The conception was mainly conducted by the research partners RWTH, FIR and IDEKO together with the pilots FIDIA, ESTARTA and DANOBAT. Responsible for the software design and implementation was SAP and myOpenFactory.

In addition the internal transparency tool has been developed. With the help of the tool companies can calculate and assess the additional costs that occur, when a supplier delivers too late. This tool is the basis for defining financial positive or negative incentives for the next order in order to motivate the supplier to deliver in time.

During the course of the project an on-going project management has been conducted by the coordinator. It covers all relevant issues due to project coordination, quality and risk management as well as project administration.

A dissemination committee has been set up in order to coordinate all dissemination activities like publications, conferences, exhibitions etc. Thus any innovations and advances, both technologically and strategically, made in this project can be spread out within Europe’s academic society as well as the machinery and equipment industry. Detailed project information is made available on the inTime website (www.fp7-intime.de). It helps to disseminate and exploit the project results generated in all work packages. The collaboration software Lotus QuickR serves as the communication and file sharing platform for the project.

Project Results:

During the last three years of the project, inTime produced a comprehensive framework, able to help companies improving the delivery reliability in each customer-supplier relationship in non-hierarchical manufacturing networks. Now, at the end of the project, the consortium has produced nine well identified products:

Result 1: InTime Study on delivery reliability in European machinery and equipment industry.
Result 2: Supplier Performance Dashboard.
Result 3: Network-wide Supplier Performance Dashboard.
Result 4: Simplified multilateral EDI (legal issue/ standardization).
Result 5: Compliant Archiving for EDI.
Result 6: Financial assessment of impact of belated deliveries.
Result 7: inTime Learning Game.
Result 8: Cloud-based Trainings.
Result 9: Reference model for Procurement Management.

The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) tables have been continuously updated during the project. Those were crucial to identify the shape of the results and make the partners to think about their commitment and interest in project results. Clarifying ownership of results is of great importance to ensure there are no obstacles or deadlocks when commercialising the results.

On 16th of May 2012 the inTime consortium had the ESS (Exploitation Strategy Seminar) in San Sebastian (Spain). During the day the partners refined their idea of the results and their exploitation strategy. This chapter presents the identified project results with a short description and the knowledge that the partners applied to the result, the identified IPR and Exploitation claims as well as the risk scoring table of result two, three and six prepared during the seminar.

Description of identified project results

The inTime consortium characterized all nine exploitable project results according to a certain framework for the characterisation of the exploitable results which has been provided during the Exploitation Strategy Seminar. The framework helps to clearly outline which are the problems addressed by the inTime tools, who will be the customers, which benefits can be reached and so forth.

The exploitable result characterization checklist has been used to describe each of the nine exploitable results. In the following tables for each exploitable result their detailed description is given. The information are mainly qualitative and are provided by all partners involved in the creation process of the specific result.

Result no. 1: inTime Study on delivery reliability in European machinery and equipment industry

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME WZL

Describe the innovation content of result Study No innovation in this sense. The study creates a basis for reasoning and argumentation.

Who will be the customer? SMEs in European machinery industry, Research Departments, “public”

What benefit will it bring to the customers? Overview of delivery reliability situation in European machinery and equipment industry. Deeper and validated understanding of reasons for bad delivery adherence.

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? 01/2012

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? completed

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 8/2012

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Layouting and Printing costs, marketing

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? 50€ per copy

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? All SMEs in Europe in machinery industry (OEMs), research institutes research 74.000 machinery companies in EU, 98.8% are SMEs

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? Some studies on the market, but none focussing on value of in time deliveries and public evaluation

Who are the competitors for this result? Other research institutions

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? 1 year (setting up questionnaire, analysis, conclusions)

Who are the partners involved in the result? All research institutions (WZL, FIR, POLIMI, IDEKO), spreading of questionnaire through dissemination channels of AFM, UCIMU, DIN

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? DANOBAT, FIDIA, OTTO JUNKER (within inTime consortium)

All companies in European machinery and equipment industry

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? Copyright of the results within consortium  e.g. Copyright through publication

Result no. 2: Supplier Performance Dashboard

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME WZL, FIR, SAP, Fujitsu, DIN, IDEKO, POLIMI

Describe the innovation content of result Automated Visualization of historic supplier performance on an aggregated as well as product level drawn from EDI communication

Simplicity of technology (few but relevant measures)

Automation of data collection

Who will be the customer? SMEs in machinery industry

What benefit will it bring to the customers? Enabling/ enhancing strategic supplier management in small and medium-sized businesses

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? 08/2012

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? 100% functional prototype at laboratory level (working on generated data); easily scalable

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 12-18 months

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Marketing effort (EURO/ year  Axel)

Set-up commercial infrastructure (EURO  Axel)

Maintenance (EURO/ year)

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? 20 € per licence per month (on top of myOpenFactory costs), should also be related to number of suppliers

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? All SMEs in Europe in machinery industry (OEMs) research

174.000 machinery companies in EU, 98.8% are SMEs

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? No comparable product available

Who are the competitors for this result? No competitor in the market/ no comparable approach in the market

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? 1,5-2 years (CWA parts, myOpenFactory,)

2 years (supplier evaluation, software architecture)

Both can be done in parallel

Who are the partners involved in the result? All beneficiaries

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? DANOBAT, FIDIA, OTTO JUNKER (within inTime consortium)

All companies who are on the myOpenFactory platform already

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? Implemented on the myOpenFactory standard (restriction to companies using myOpenFactory

Result no. 3: Network-wide Supplier Performance Dashboard

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME FIR, SAP

Describe the innovation content of result Automated Visualization of historic suppliers’ performances on an aggregated as well as product level drawn from EDI communication data collected throughout the entire supply network.

Simplicity of technology (few but relevant measures)

Automation of data collection

Enabling direct comparison between suppliers’ based on historic performance visualization

Who will be the customer? SMEs in machinery industry

What benefit will it bring to the customers? Enabling/ enhancing strategic supplier management in small and medium-sized businesses

Supporting operative supplier selection within the procurement process

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? 08/2012

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? 100% functional prototype at laboratory level (working on generated data); easily scalable

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 09/2013

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Marketing effort (EURO/ year  Axel)

Set-up commercial infrastructure (EURO  Axel)

Maintenance (EURO/ year)

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? 20 € per licence per month (on top of myOpenFactory costs), should also be related to number of suppliers

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? 5-10% of the European SMEs in manufacturing industry (5%-10% of 2.2Mio companies = approximately 100.000-200.000 companies. This corresponds to approximately 150.000 x 240€ = 36Mio€ with averaged values

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? Business Intelligence Tools focused on supplier relationship management – however these tools lack the possibility to compute performance indicators on the basis of network EDI-data

Who are the competitors for this result? Vendors of SRM-systems with BI capabilities

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? 1,5-2 years (CWA parts, myOpenFactory,)

2 years (supplier evaluation, software architecture)

Both can be done in parallel

Who are the partners involved in the result? All beneficiaries

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? DANOBAT, FIDIA, OTTO JUNKER (within inTime consortium)

All companies who are on the myOpenFactory platform already

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? Implemented on the myOpenFactory standard (restriction to companies using myOpenFactory)

Result no. 4: Simplified multilateral EDI (legal issue/ standardization)

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME DIN, Fujitsu

Describe the innovation content of result Standardized multilateral EDI environment

(Consulting)

Who will be the customer? 1) SMEs in machinery industry,

2) Any company using EDI,
3) EDI service providers

What benefit will it bring to the customers? 1) Learning how to utilize EDI for their order management process, project plan for implementation

2) Learning how to increase the utilization of EDI in their supplier network, project plan for implementation
3) Learning how to implement the CEN CWA for their services and to provide simplified EDI to their customers or target groups

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? 08/2012

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? Blueprint of consulting offering

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 12 months

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Service definition

Workshop and Consulting design

Marketing efforts

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? 800-1200€ per day of Workshop 0€ if used as pre-sale or marketing, i.e. for result no.9

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? 174.000 companies in machine tool industry in Europe 400 providers of e-invoicing 10M€ p.y. in Europe (addressable 0,5M€ p.y.) increasing with penetration of electronic business processes

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? High competition by companies like GS1, PWC or other consulting companies.

Low profile in this sector by project participants.

Who are the competitors for this result? GS1, consulting companies like PWC, KPMG, CPAs, EDI service providers

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? There will be a soon response, after publishing the CWA and public presentations.

Who are the partners involved in the result? All beneficiaries

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? FIR, WZL, Polimi, Ideko, Fujitsu

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? It is based on the standardization efforts within the inTime project. Hence, no protection is possible.

Result no. 5: Compliant Archiving for EDI

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME Fujitsu, DIN

Describe the innovation content of result Compliant EDI messaging and archiving system based on myOpenFactory and Fujitsu SecDocs.

Who will be the customer? 1) SMEs in machinery industry,

2) Any company using EDI

What benefit will it bring to the customers? Multilateral EDI order management process within the manufacturing network including e-invoicing and optional archiving service.

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? 08/2012

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? Multilateral EDI platform

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 3-6 months

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Service definition

Workshop and Consulting design

Marketing efforts

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? EDI messaging: 100€ per month, 5ct. per message

Archiving: 100€ per month, 1ct per message per month of archiving

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? 174.000 machinery companies in EU, 98.8% are SMEs.

A rate of 30% using archiving shall be assumed.

100 messages per day in average shall be assumed.

Market size EDI messaging: 43.5M€

Market size archiving: 193M€ after complete retention period of 10 years

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? EDI messaging: competitive pricing according to experiences of myOpenFactory

Archiving: pricing analogous to e-invoicing providers (e.g. basware)

Considering performance, this system will enable the easiest possible order management including e-invoicing without electronic signatures.

Who are the competitors for this result? EDI providers like Crossgate e-invoicing providers like basware

Most competitors focus on large enterprises

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? Competitors need either to adopt the concept according to the CWA to implement a similar solution or to reduce their pricing.

Adaptation of the inTime approach will take about 1-2 years.

Currently, there are no comparable archiving systems like SecDocs available. Hence, competitors need to develop a similar solution or to use SecDocs.

Who are the partners involved in the result? Fujitsu, FIR, DIN (standardization)

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? Fujitsu, FIR

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? It is objective of the standardization efforts within the inTime project. Hence, no protection of IP is possible. Nevertheless, adaptation of the concept needs about 2 years, plus evaluation by some CPA.

Additionally, Fujitsu SecDocs has to be applied or a similar solution has to be developed, which will take about 2 years).

Result no. 6: Financial assessment of impact of belated deliveries

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME IDEKO

Describe the innovation content of result A completely new methodology and tool to estimate the internal impact of missing parts and delayed deliveries within the company, based on the actual delivery capacity of suppliers. The method measures the internal cost impacts concerning the delayed delivery within the machine and plant construction process. Moreover the indicators needed for the final cost calculation have been defined in order to be got them almost automatically from the ERP system.

Who will be the customer? Any company in Machinery industry. Specially directed to purchasing department responsibles.

What benefit will it bring to the customers? Most of the companies do not know exactly what expenses or extra-costs supposes to them not to deliver parts or products in-time. So the strategies that they follow during the purchasing process might not be the best one (e.g. based on product price). With this tool companies can assess and control in detailed way all the cost related to parts or products deliveries and later define the best strategies for their purchasing negotiations.

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? The methodology and the Excel tool have already been developed. (8/2012)

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? 100% functional prototype at laboratory level; easily scalable

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 8/2012

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Marketing effort (20.000 Euro/year)

Develop commercial infrastructure (10.000 Euro)

Maintenance (10.000 Euro/year)

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? Web based tool: 500 €/use

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? 174.000 companies in Europe. Although the tool has been designed and developed for mainstream market.

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? No comparable product available

Who are the competitors for this result? Another universities or consultancy companies researching and working in the supply chain management.

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? 1-1,5 years.

Who are the partners involved in the result? IDEKO, FIR ,POLIMI, MyOpenFactory, SAP, WZL

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? IDEKO, FIR, POLIMI,WZL MyOpenFactory,

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? The excel tool will be protected with copyright.

Result no. 7: inTime Learning Game

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME POLIMI

Describe the innovation content of result It promotes a holistic perspective on the delivery reliability problem, by underlining a “total cost” approach in place of siloed decision processes.

It aims to support dissemination and teaching activities with a hand-on example of the benefits of the inTime overall approach.

Who will be the customer? - Universities and education institutes

- SMEs in machinery industry

What benefit will it bring to the customers? The learning game allows practitioners and students to experience the decision processes underlying negotiation and incentivation.

It enhances the understanding of the complexity underlying delivery reliability problems in non-hierarchical networks. This is done in a simulated environment relieving the stress of real decisions.

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? 08/2012

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? 100% functional and tested prototype

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 6-9 months, due to game code refactoring and optimization

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Set-up of commercial infrastructure (hardware + code refactoring and optimization): about 5.000 - 8.000€

Cost for web hosting + maintenance: about 2.500 – 3.500 €/year

Cost for printing documentation: 100 €/workshop

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? The learning game can be commercialized in two ways:

- Half-day workshop in companies, organized by institutions participating into the inTime consortium. The price is about 2.500-3.500€/workshop, comprising the remuneration of the workshop organizers/instructors.
- Licensing to University and educational institutions, in order to allow them to use the learning game for didactic purposes. The cost of the licence could be about 500-1.000€/year.

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? All SMEs in Europe in machinery industry (OEMs) + Universities holding courses in SCM

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? Other learning games in SCM are available but no comparable products are available for the delivery reliability problem

Who are the competitors for this result? Potentially other research institutes providing education on supply chain management

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? 8-12 months

Who are the partners involved in the result? All beneficiaries

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? All beneficiaries

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? The learning game will be protected through a license that restricts the usage for commercial purposes. Only institutions and 3rd parties explicitly authorized by the inTime consortium can exploit the learning game for commercial purposes (i.e. workshop).

Result no. 8: Cloud-based Trainings

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME Fujitsu

Describe the innovation content of result Providing e-Learning an training regarding supplier evaluation and inTime based methods out of the cloud

Who will be the customer?

1) SMEs in machinery industry,
2) Research, education
3) Consulting companies

What benefit will it bring to the customers? Utilizing online training on inTime results European wide without dedicated infrastructure

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? 08/2012

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? inTime learning game, inTime tools and papers

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 6-12 months

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Cost of adaptation of the results for e-learning and setup of infrastructure

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? Fee for education provider: 500€-1000€ per month

Fee for training user: 200€-400€ per day of training

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? 174.000 machinery companies in EU, 98.8% are SMEs.

Assumptions:

10% of these companies want to adopt inTime tools and need training on their usage.

3 people per company need training for 5 days

2 training providers (Polimi, WZL) in a first attempt

Market Size: about 104M€

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? This offering will compete with consulting offerings regarding supplier evaluation.

However, most SMEs will not hire external consultants, but are willing to learn more on this issue. Thus, price and performance of an online training will be a competitive solution for many SMEs.

Pricing is low compared to external consultants or trainings.

Who are the competitors for this result? Consulting companies, education

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? Competitors need to adopt the inTime approach and provide comparable tools. This should take at least 1 year.

Who are the partners involved in the result? Polimi, WZL, FIR, ...

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? WZL, FIR, Polimi

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? The inTime tools and the approach these are based on is objective of the project’s dissemination. Hence most results have been published. However, adaptation is difficult without the background of the inTime project.

Result no. 9: Reference model for Procurement Management

RAPPORTEUR PARTNER NAME FIR, SAP

Describe the innovation content of result Development of holistic procurement model

Development of data exchange patterns based on the demand classification

Derivation of measures in order to improve the procurement process on the basis of suppliers’ performance assessment

Who will be the customer? SMEs in machinery industry

What benefit will it bring to the customers? Enabling/support the design of appropriate and efficient procurement processes according to the type of ordered products.

When is the expected date of achievement in the project (Mth/yr)? End of WP3

What will be the technological readiness level by the end of the project? 100% applicable conceptual model

When is the time to market (Mth/yr)? 6-12 months

What are the costs to be incurred after the project and before exploitation? Marketing effort (20.000 € / year)

Training (10.000 € / year)

What is the approximate price range of this result / price of licences? Price of a consultancy project regarding the implementation of the model – approximately 20.000-40.000 €

What is the market size in Million € for this result and relevant trend? 0,1% of the European SMEs in manufacturing industry (0,1% of 2.2Mio companies = approximately 20.000 companies. This corresponds to approximately 2.000 x 30.000€ = 60Mio€ with averaged values over the next 10 years

How this result will rank against competing products in terms of price / performance? Can’t be assessed

Who are the competitors for this result? Consulting companies with focus on procurement

How fast and in what ways will the competition respond to this result? 0,5 years (the reference model is going to be published and could be used by other consultancy companies)

Who are the partners involved in the result? All beneficiaries

Who are the industrial partners interested in the result (partners, sponsors, etc…)? All industrial consultancy companies (within consortium: FIR, Ideko, Polimi, SAP)

Have you protected or will you protect this result? How? When? Not protectable

Potential Impact:

1. Dissemination Strategy

A coordinated dissemination strategy is required in order to maximise the impact of the project in practice as well as in the research community, whilst maintaining the overall costs of the dissemination effort at reasonable levels and avoid overburdening the development effort.

A great number of dissemination activities took place during the project duration, especially during the second half of the project since all technical results have become available. The inTime Consortium developed a three-year general dissemination strategy which is a part of the overall project plan to explain how the Consortium partners will share project outcomes and learn more on supply chain integration and real-time decision making in non-hierarchical manufacturing networks with stakeholders and the community.

Considering the complexity, the involvement of the partners from different European countries and the strategic approach aimed at involving the largest number of potentially interested parties (in the long run most of all European manufacturing and equipment companies), the decision was taken when elaborating the project proposal to assign a significant importance to communication, allocating a considerable amount of the total budget to these activities. Hence, the present initial dissemination plan was drawn up so as to guarantee the best possible planning and correct implementation of the identified activities.

Purpose and goal of dissemination activities (what)

With reference to the inTime project proposal approved by the European Commission and in particular to Work package 7 “Dissemination and Exploitation”, the aim of the present plan is that of defining some guidelines and operating directions for the communication activities that must be developed during the course of the project. The aim of these activities is twofold:

• Helping and tracing actions of the single parties involved during the time frame of the project (39 months) in order to make all the started activities coherent with one another,
• Guaranteeing an effective communication and promotion of the project towards a specified target group in order to get a structured collection of feedback.

Target analysis (who)

The reference targets of the whole project, and thus of the communication activities can be divided into internal and external partners.

The first group includes all persons (respectively the organisations which they represent) that are actively and formally involved in the project, consequently the thirteen partners that compose the inTime Consortium. The information and communication processes that involve this group of users compose the information structure needed for the progress of the activity and to reach the project objectives.

The second group, instead, includes external private and public bodies (or entire industries), which are target not only of the communication activities, but more in general of the whole project:

• Companies of the European manufacturing and equipment industry, which may possibly be interested in the results of the project,
• Companies from other industries (e.g. pharmaceutical industry, construction, retail, healthcare), which may experience similar information asymmetries as the manufacturing and equipment industry,
• The scientific community, universities, and internal research clusters (e.g. IFIP, IEEE, CIRP),
• The ICT market and software vendors of enterprise resource planning systems,
• General press contacts and the national and international press in order to reach interested European citizens.

Role of the lead partner/ other partners within the dissemination of the project results (who)

The responsibility of RWTH as work package leader (in agreement with all the other project partners) lies in:

• Defining the coordinated image guidelines and main tools adopted by all partners to identify the project in an unitary manner,
• Defining and producing the communication tools needed to transmit the aims and the results of the project at different public levels,
• Planning promotion occasions and events to present the project during all the three years of the project.

To have a more effective communication and to optimize the resources in the project, all project partners were requested to:

• Co-operate with the lead partner to guarantee internal and external communication of the project objectives, progress and results,
• Provide, in timely manner, the project materials, contacts, publications, information for the website, etc. as requested by the lead partner,
• Disseminate information on the project at local level, involving the interested communities.

The active and prompt collaboration of the partners with the project coordinator/lead partner is the main success prerequisite of the communication activity aimed at external parties. The lead partner prepares and makes available to the other partners the main communication tools at international level, that are required to inform and ease the exchange of experiences between the single communities, but one of the autonomous tasks and responsibilities of each partner is the use and dissemination of the tools and products provided, as well as the communication activities within their own national and local communities. An overview of the effort in person-months for dissemination as well as exploitation is illustrated below:

• RWTH, 10 person-months
• DIN, 8 person-months
• ESTARTA, 2 person-months
• FIDIA, 4 person-months
• FIR, 4 person-months
• FSC. 5 person-months
• IDEKO, 3 person-months
• Otto Junker, 2 person-months
• Polimi, 3 person-months
• SAP, 6 person-months
• UCIMU, 3 person-months
• AFM, 3 person-months

To make as many people as possible aware of and interested to adopt the inTime project results, a multi-channel dissemination approach was used:

3.5.1. inTime branding

The design of an inTime brand/logo is an important activity for unifying the external communication and visual identity of the project consortium. The logo is used as a basis for document and presentation templates, as well as for flyer and posters distributed at relevant events.

3.5.2. Website

The inTime website is the first communication tool created by the inTime Consortium. The project website is an important and versatile dissemination tool. It informs the community about project, findings, and resources created, and about what has been learned.

The official domain is www.fp7-intime.eu which is simple and recognisable, and it refers both to the project and to the EU dimension of the project. This reference is also included in the e-mail signature of the project members when communicating with interested parties.

3.5.3. Flyer and Poster

Creating poster or flyer about research projects and findings offers a visually appealing way to disseminate information to broad audiences. It requires extensive simplification of information due to limited space. However, this format may be easily applicable for the ‘graphical results’ of the project (e.g. visualisation of process changes, screenshot of prototype, etc.) and was crucial for promoting the projects at all events, conferences, and workshops to which inTime has been participated. Therefore the inTime flyer and poster have been developed in order to disseminate the concept and idea of the project already in an early stage and has been updated every time new results were generated.

The general objective of this dissemination activity is clearly to promote goals and publicize the available services to final users. Hence, the flyer and the posters are addressed both to experts and non-experts, while summarizing the project goals of inTime. In addition, they are graphically in accordance with all other dissemination material and shall attract the attention of the specified target audience.

3.5.4. Standard presentation

As posters and flyer are limited in space, a standard presentation of the inTime idea and method is another helpful dissemination instrument for external parties who are profoundly interested in the project results. More than flyer or posters, a presentation provides a more detailed overview of the concepts, methods, and tools that have been developed by the consortium partners as well as intensifies the inTime branding to a greater extent.

Accessible from the collaboration platform Lotus Quickr, the inTime standard presentation could and still can be used as means to promote a wider participation to the project activities. Moreover, it can be employed by the different project partners for educational or other promotional activities (e.g .in conferences and workshops; see subsequent sections). In the course of the project the presentation has been updated.

3.5.5. Conferences

As described in the project proposal, it was the overall aim of the project and all its partners to promote the inTime project by contributing to international scientific and professional conferences and events (e.g. as guest speakers, as contributors of scientific papers, as organizer of panel discussions, etc.). In order to attract wide public attention, this was taken over by every partner in his or hers special field on local, national and international level.

The following conferences have been visited:

• APMS Conference 2009 (19.-23. September 2009 in Bordeaux, France)
• POMS Conference 2010 (01.-04. May 2009 in Orlando, USA)
• ICIEMT Conference 2010 (26.-28. May 2010 in Tokyo, Japan)
• ICE Conference 2010 (21.-23. June 2010 in Lugano, Switzerland)
• IADIS Conference 2010 (26.-31. July 2010 in Freiburg, Germany)
• IFIP WCC Conference 2010 (20.-23. September 2010 in Brisbane, Australia)
• APMS Conference 2010 (11.-13. October 2010 in Como, Italy)
• Special session (IFIP Working Group 5.7 on Advances in Production Management Sytems) (11.-13. October 2010 in Como, Italy)
• ICE Conference 2011 (20.-22. June 2011 in Aachen, Germany)
• International Conference on Interoperability for Enterprise Systems and Applications I-ESA 2012 (21.-23. March 2012 in Valencia, Spain)
• IKE 2012 (16.-19. July 2012 in Las Vegas, USA)
• Global Business Research Conference (24.-25.September 2012 in Cancun, Mexico)

During the APMS 2010 (11th – 13th October 2010 in Como, Italy) a special inTime session called “Intelligent Non-Hierarchical Manufacturing Networks” has been organized including a call for papers, a presentation of papers and several discussions. In total 13 papers have been handed in; eight have been selected for presentation during the special session.

3.5.6. Exhibitions and Fares

The Beneficiaries of the inTime Consortium have been active on several exhibitions and fares presenting the results achieved in the project. The following exhibitions/ fares have been visited:

• LAMIERA (LAMBDA RTDI-IN-FORMING) (12.-15. May 2010 in Cinisello Balsamo MI, Italy)
• SAP Research Day (14. June 2010 in Regensdorf/Zurich, Switzerland)
• IFF science days (15.-17. June 2010 in Magdeburg, Germany)
• 27.BI-MU/SFORTEC (5.-9. October 2010 in Cinisello Balsamo MI, Italy)
• BIEMH EXHIBITION (28.May-02.June 2011 in Bilbao, Spain)
• BME Symposium (09.-11. November 2011 in Berlin, Germany)
• LAMIERA (LAMBDA RTDI-IN-FORMING) (9.-12. May 2012 in Cinisello Balsamo MI, Italy) [PLANNED]
• 28.BI-MU/SFORTEC (2.-6. October 2012 in Cinisello Balsamo MI, Italy)

3.5.7. Publications

In addition to the participation at conferences and events, the members of the consortium were supposed to jointly contribute with articles to trade magazines, books as well as academic journals to generate interest in inTime itself and its research results.

25 publications have been published in the framework of the project.

All contributions are expected to include an acknowledgement statement like “The work published in this paper is (partly) funded by the European Commission through the INTIME STREP. It does not represent the view of E.C. or the inTime consortium, and authors are solely responsible for the paper's content.”

3.5.8. Standardization workshop

Standardization has gained more and more importance within research in the past years. It can be considered as a valuable instrument enhancing recognition of researchers' results, providing faster and easier market access to innovations, enabling them even to access bigger markets, and fostering interoperability as well as comparability of products, components, systems or services – just to name a few advantages of integrating standardization into research.

An adequate medium for documenting research results on a European level is forming a CEN/CENELEC Workshop. The document, which is developed during such a Workshop, is called CEN/CENELEC Workshop Agreement (CWA). Regarding the creation process, a CWA differs significantly from a European Standard. Therefore, it also does not have the same status as a European Standard. In contrast to a European Standard, a CWA does not have to be adopted mandatorily by each CEN/CENELEC member. Not all interested parties are involved. It is rather developed by a flexible Workshop consortium and aims at documenting research results. Being flexible, fast and temporary, it is considered as a suitable.

With inTime a completely new logic for production planning and resource allocation has been developed for the manufacturing and equipment industry. In order to disseminate and transfer this new knowledge to the relevant communities the creation of the CWA has taken place between November 2011 and July 2012 whereas the main contents had been finalised until May 2012. After the public comment period only some editorial changes (formatting, etc.) had to be made.

Apart from four supportive chapters that aim to help structuring the contents of the CWA (scope, normative references, terms and definitions, list of abbreviations) the standardisation document focuses on two main topics. The first topic to be dealt with is the order management process and the related messages, which means presenting workflow and structure of accompanying documents. Security requirements for legal compliance are the second aspect related to such an order management process. Authentication and identity management, integrity of messages during transport, non-repudiation, confidentiality, completeness of the message trail as well as integrity during retention have to be considered in order to fulfill legal compliance when exchanging messages between businesses.

3.5.9. Conference workshop / panel discussion

The consortium also has organized panel discussions at selected international scientific conferences in order to present the project to a targeted audience. As mentioned before, it has been considered to be pivotal for the dissemination to take part to events, such as exhibitions, fairs, trade shows, conferences, relevant workshops and seminars. The realization of an inTime conference workshop has raised the possibility to present the inTime idea and especially the show cases to a very specific and interested audience. A first panel discussion took place at the International Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems 2010 (APMS 2010) in Como. Further panel discussions have been conducted at the International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising 2011 (ICE 2011) in Aachen and at the 28.BI-MU in October 2012 in Milan.

3.5.10. Participation at iNET-IMS and the IMS2020 initiative

As discussed during the Kick-Off Meeting in Aachen, a Manufacturing Technology Platform (MTP) initiative has been launched, which is coordinated by Prof. Raul Poler (University of Valencia). The initiative called iNet-IMS covers the four EC-FP7 funded projects REMPLANET (Grant Agreement No. 229333), CONVERGE (Grant Agreement No. 228746), Net-challenge (Grant Agreement No. 229287) and inTime (Grant Agreement No. 229132). The initiatives’ official kick of has taken place during the ICE Conference 2010 (21.-23.6.2010) in Lugano.

The iNet-IMS MTP initiative has a duration of 24 months (till end of April 2012). Many activities and events are expected during the 2 years project duration, for deploying the above mentioned objectives: meetings, workshops, forums, papers, book publications, development of new project proposals to the EC and participation to conferences.

Dissemination roadmap (when)

The following table describes the work plan for all dissemination activities:

• Interim project promotion report (SAP, RWTH)
• inTime Branding (RWTH)
• Website (RWTH)
• Flyer and Poster (SAP, RWTH)
• Standard presentation (RWTH)
• Conferences and events (All)
• Publications (All)
• Standardization Workshop (DIN)
• iNet-IMS initiative (Polimi, RWTH)
• Show case (SAP, FIR)
• Final Project promotion report (SAP, RWTH)

2. Exploitation of the inTime results

During the last three years of the project, inTime produced a comprehensive framework, able to help companies improving the delivery reliability in each customer-supplier relationship in non-hierarchical manufacturing networks. Now, at the end of the project, the consortium has produced nine well identified products:

Result 1: InTime Study on delivery reliability in European machinery and equipment industry.
Result 2: Supplier Performance Dashboard.
Result 3: Network-wide Supplier Performance Dashboard.
Result 4: Simplified multilateral EDI (legal issue/ standardization).
Result 5: Compliant Archiving for EDI.
Result 6: Financial assessment of impact of belated deliveries.
Result 7: inTime Learning Game.
Result 8: Cloud-based Trainings.
Result 9: Reference model for Procurement Management.

The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) tables have been continuously updated during the project. Those were crucial to identify the shape of the results and make the partners to think about their commitment and interest in project results. Clarifying ownership of results is of great importance to ensure there are no obstacles or deadlocks when commercialising the results.

On 16th of May 2012 the inTime consortium had the ESS (Exploitation Strategy Seminar) in San Sebastian (Spain). During the day the partners refined their idea of the results and their exploitation strategy. This chapter presents the identified project results with a short description and the knowledge that the partners applied to the result, the identified IPR and Exploitation claims as well as the risk scoring table of result two, three and six prepared during the seminar.

IPR claims

From the ESS meeting the partners identified background and foreground knowledge and the IPR claims of each result. Hence, we documented the information about the knowledge that each partner contributes for each exploitable result in an IPR and Exploitation claims table. The knowledge is divided in Background (B) and Foreground (F). Finally in the same table each partner’s exploitation claims are shown using specific alphabetical letters.

- Making them and selling them (M)
- Using them internally to make something else for sale (U). U applies also to universities willing to use the result in new research projects.
- To license them to 3rd parties (L);
- To provide services such as consultancy, etc…(O).

The filled table provided a comprehensive list of the exploitable project outcomes also thanks to the ESS meeting that helped the consortium to focus on the concrete results description and the initial exploitation strategy. Nevertheless, the implementation in practice depends on the consortium resolving two main challenges:

• The results developed in the project are set of tools and methods that can be used in many ways, either form an information or transparency perspective (providing visibility over the supplier network, and gaining insight on internal costs), or from a process perspective, (implementing EDI, standardising the exchange of information and changing the procurement processes). The consortium has to devise how complete solution can be offered, how these results can work together, and how implementing some results can lead to promoting the others.
• In order to ensure the results are applied on the whole supply chain it is required to implement them at European level. The consortium has the challenge of finding the right licensing partners, particularly in countries such as Italy and Spain, where the machine tool sector is stronger.

List of Websites:

http://www.fp7-intime.eu/

Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Jasinski, [e-mail]
Head of Group Process Management
Chair for Production Systematics
Laboratory of Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) at RWTH Aachen University
Steinbachstr. 19, D-52074 Aachen, http://www.wzl.rwth-aachen.de
Phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]

Dipl.-Ing. Dipl.-Wirt. Ing. Thomas Froitzheim
[e-mail]
Group Process Management
Chair for Production Systematics
Laboratory of Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) at RWTH Aachen University
Steinbachstr. 19, D-52074 Aachen, http://www.wzl.rwth-aachen.de
Phone: [phone], Fax: [phone]