The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will cause disruptive changes in many sectors of the global economy and IoT in manufacturing will be one of the largest segments in this emerging global market. This means companies will have to invest to make their future products IoT-aware, and to make their own processes capable of utilising IoT. Businesses must be able to communicate and do transactions on and via such platforms. However, the World Economic also states that: “The big winners will be platform owners and partners who can harness the network effect inherent in these new digital business models to create new kinds of value.”
If platforms are going to be the winners, then there should be more platform owners in Europe, and this is what the collaboration Network for Industry, Manufacturing, Business and Logistics (NIMBLE) project is about. NIMBLE has developed a federated, multi-sided and cloud services-based business ecosystem that supports:
a. B2B collaboration for industry, manufacturers, business and logistics;
b. ICT-based innovation of products and evolution of traditional business models;
c. federated, competitive yet interoperable instances of the platform
NIMBLE needed to achieve the following objectives:
1. create a platform ecosystem to attract early adopters;
2. ensure ease of entry and initial ease of use with quick rewards;
3. grow platform usage in a viral manner
4. master the usage of the platform step-by-step to evolve business cooperation;
5. from the earliest steps to master-level, ensure trust, security and privacy.
The project platform was validated in 4 distinct use cases that involved 4 relevant EU industries: Whirlpool Europe srl (Italy), focusing on White Goods industry, Lindbäcks (Sweden), focusing on ready-made wooden buildings, Piacenza (Italy), focusing on high-value textile manufacturing, Micuna, s.l. (Spain), focusing on High-quality childcare furniture.
The project's most prominent success story is the development of a Furniture Manufacturing Platform run by AIDIMME and FEVAMA that has to date, attracted 260 companies engaging in B2B transactions via the NIMBLE platform technology stack.